Anglo-Irish Murders (15 page)

‘To whom?’

‘To his superiors. To my husband.’

‘Ah, your husband? And were these letters believed?’

‘No. We denounced them as tittle-tattle, but it meant we had to be careful.’

‘So who do you think sent them?’

‘Securocrats, of course.’

‘Why would the security forces care about a priest and a cultural activist having an affair?’

‘They wish to destabilise our movement. They will use any means however foul. That’s why they murdered him. They think it’ll frighten me and my brothers and sisters in struggle. But it won’t. While there is breath in my body I will fight for an Ireland united, Gaelic and free. And making a martyr of him will only make me more determined.’

She burst into loud sobs and then, after a couple of minutes, pushed her chair back and jumped up. ‘The fools, the fools, the fools. They have left us our Fenian dead,’ she thundered, before she walked out of the room and banged the door.

‘The dead, the dead, the dead,’ muttered McNulty to Sergeant Bradley. ‘They have left us our Fenian Fools.’

He walked up and down the room for a moment or two. ‘Mind you, Joe, what would you expect? I hear her people are from Cavan.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘And as we all know, Cavan people would tip a cat going through a skylight and come back for the kittens.’

Chapter Fifteen

‘Well now, Rollo, from what you told me earlier about the shenanigans last night, ‘tis yourself’s in a position to tell us who could have done mischief to the priest.’

‘More likely who couldn’t, Inspector. Incidentally, are you sure she’s telling the truth?’

‘About the relationship with O’Flynn, yes.’

‘And the times?’

‘Can’t see any reason why she wouldn’t. Let’s work on that basis anyway.’

‘So the key time is between two, when he went down his staircase unharmed and just after six when he went back to his room and presumably encountered the dark and the bottles.’

McNulty looked hopefully at Pooley. ‘Can anyone be ruled out?’

‘I’m not an expert on drunken behaviour but I’d be astounded if Wallace or O’Shea could have stirred after they reached their beds.’

‘They couldn’t have been faking?’

‘I don’t believe any of my flock could have been faking. I saw how much they drank and none of it was lemonade.’

‘And that applies to all of them?’

‘I suppose it’s conceivable in certain circumstances that Robert Amiss, Lady Troutbeck, Willie Hughes or Tomiichi Okinawa might have been capable of engaging in a practical joke, though I’d expect most of them—even though befuddled—to steer clear of something with potentially lethal consequences. But even if any or all of them had tried something like that, they’d have broken the bottles, smashed the light bulb and woken up everyone within shouting distance.

‘Apart from anything else, my room isn’t far from O’Flynn’s staircase, and though I didn’t get to sleep before three, I heard nothing.’

McNulty gazed dispiritedly at his list. ‘So, assuming the bottles were planted during the night, and leaving the couple of live-in staff out of it for now, the suspects are limited to you, Steeples, who was back here by eleven o’clock, Taylor, Kapur, Gibson, MacPhrait and the fat American. And of course, that academic who arrived after you’d all gone out and stayed in the bar reading alone until about ten thirty.’ He pulled his moustache despairingly. ‘There’s as likely a line-up as I’ve ever seen, especially if we might be thinking of ye in relation to the flag-pole mullarky.’

‘Inspector.’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you more inclined now to think Billy Pratt was murdered?’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. There was some funny business with the rope that I’ll tell you about again. But they won’t like that in Dublin.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go over and speak to them. And then I’ll have a brief chat with everyone individually. Now do you want to hide there for the duration?’

‘I’d like to. But how will I explain my absence?’

‘Tell them…tell them…’

‘…I’ve an urgent report to compose for my millionaire.’

‘There you are. You’re an inventive fella for an Englishman.’

Pooley looked at him demurely. ‘I’m not wholly English, Inspector. I had an Irish grandmother.’

‘Where was she from?’

‘Cork.’

McNulty stopped dead. ‘A grandmother from Cork. Are ye serious? And ye never told me? What part of Cork?’

‘Near Mallow.’

‘That’s even better.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Can’t stop now to talk. You can tell me more later.’

As the hitherto silent Bradley rose to follow McNulty, he paused beside Pooley. ‘Do ye know the definition of a Corkman with an inferiority complex?’

‘No.’

‘Someone who just thinks he’s as good as everyone else.’ He left the room without looking back.

***

McNulty tugged his moustache. ‘Look, ladies and gentlemen, I know this is distressing for all of you, but I have a job to do and I intend to do it. All I can suggest is that you do the job you came to do as well. If we can see all of ye today and ye’re all cooperative, with a bit of luck we’ll be able to let ye go tomorrow lunchtime, when the conference is due to end.

‘Sergeant Bradley and I will have our headquarters upstairs. He’ll be coming and going to tell you who we want to see and when. We’ll try and disrupt things as little as possible. But please remember it’s in all our interests to clear this up, and the more you cooperate, the quicker we’ll all be out of here.

‘Now I’ll leave ye get back to your discussion.’

As he closed the door behind him, the conference participants sat in sullen silence. The baroness looked around the table. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing for it. Like it or not, we’re stuck here. And we might as well be stuck here discussing whether we’re separate races or just mongrels pretending to have pedigrees as well as anything else.’

She fixed Taylor with a steely eye. ‘You’ve got off lightly this morning. Give us your opinion.’

Taylor looked at her miserably and then jerked himself into life. ‘While, of course, I admire Dr Schwartz’s obvious scholarship, I feel he takes too little cognisance of the clear proof of a singular Celtic genius which has given to Western Europe a profound spirituality, infused…’

Amiss sat in a reverie, envying Pooley.

***

McNulty was struggling to keep his temper with the maintenance man. ‘Look, Peadar, for the hundredth time, I’m not accusing you of anything. It’s not your fault that you were at your cousin’s when we needed you yesterday. And no one’s blaming you for what happened with the flagpole. Just tell me all I need to know about flagpoles.’

‘What do you need to know?’

‘Why it would collapse.’

‘Sure you know that already, don’t ye?’

‘I want a full explanation of how this accident could have happened.’

‘How would I know, and me not even here?’

‘Peadar,’ snapped McNulty, ‘stop playing games. I know you’re a Kerryman, but even so you’ll answer my questions if I have to lock you up until you do.’

‘And how would you be able to do that? Don’t I have a brother a guard and doesn’t he tell me ye…’

‘Peadar,’ roared McNulty. ‘Why did the flagpole collapse?’

‘Didn’t someone undo the bolt that fastened the hinge?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Didn’t I take down that flagpole only two weeks ago to paint it?’

‘Yes. And?’

‘And when I put it up again, didn’t I put the bolt on?’

‘Maybe ye didn’t.’

‘How could the pole have stayed up if I didn’t?’

‘Maybe ye didn’t close it properly?’

‘Why wouldn’t I, and I closing it at all?’

‘If that’s the case, how could Billy Pratt have been killed?’

‘How would I know?’

McNulty raised his voice to a level Pooley thought would be audible in the dining room. ‘Peadar Kennealy, you’re so cute you’ll disappear up your own arse if you’re not careful. Now if you don’t stop this oul shite this instant, I’m arresting you for obstructing the gardai in the course of their enquiries.’

McNulty’s eloquence had its effect. Though for his own self-respect, Kennealy maintained his grudging tone, he changed tactics. ‘You’ve no call to get so worked up. I’m the one has to put up them feckin’ flags. Do you think I’d leave the feckin’ bolts undone?’

‘We all make mistakes.’

‘Listen, guard, it’d be one thing to forget to close the bolt at all. But it’d be another to close it only a little bit so someone could be kilt. How could ye make that mistake?’

‘You tell me.’

‘If ye ask me,’ said Kennealy, ‘someone set that fella up. All he’d have had to do was slip the bolt nearly but not quite open.’

‘How could he be sure it would hold long enough for someone to climb the ladder?’

‘He probably couldn’t. Maybe he was just lucky.’

‘I want you to go up to the roof with a couple of guards and have a look.’

‘At what?’

‘Kennealy!’

‘Oh, I’ll go so.’

As Kennealy left the room with Bradley, McNulty tore back Pooley’s curtain. ‘Jaysus,’ he shouted, ‘them Kerry hoors wouldn’t give Marilyn Monroe a straight answer if she offered them a ride.’

An obvious joke about necrophilia surfaced in Pooley’s mind, but he repressed it firmly.

McNulty breathed heavily for a minute or so and then recovered his equilibrium. ‘Right, Rollo. Now what with all Father Cormac business, I had divil the chance of telling you what came out yesterday about Billy Pratt.’

Pooley looked at McNulty eagerly.

‘Willie Hughes and Simon Gibson thought Pratt was intending this as an election stunt. He was running for a council seat and the omens weren’t looking good. Hughes had been expecting to win.’

‘Seems a peculiar election stunt.’

‘Of course it was peculiar. This is bloody Northern Ireland we’re talking about. They’re all peculiar.’ McNulty handed Pooley a piece of paper. ‘This was in Pratt’s back pocket. He was obviously going to fax it through to the media as soon as he’d run the flag up.’

Pooley read it quickly. ‘“Billy Pratt today raised the Union flag on Moycoole Castle in a symbolic demand for parity of esteem. ‘The Irish tricolour flies in Northern Ireland as a gesture of respect to those who consider themselves Irish,’ he said. ‘Where is the reciprocation in the Republic for those who consider themselves British? If parity of esteem means anything, it must mean that our Britishness is recognized throughout the island.

‘“I have raised this flag on Moycoole Castle as a protest on behalf of myself, my community and all British people living in Ireland.”’

‘Now,’ said McNulty, ‘Hughes says and Gibson confirmed that Pratt knew he was getting too much of a reputation among his own people as a compromiser, so he had to find a way of showing he was a hard man. Indeed Hughes said he wasn’t surprised at Billy’s duplicity. Said he could be a treacherous wee bastard since he’d learned from republicans that the way to impress people was by words not actions.’

‘So this exploit would have run well back home?’

‘Very well, apparently. Especially if he was heavily criticised by nationalists. Indeed Hughes said he wouldn’t have been surprised if Pratt had done some advance deal with a MOPEer or two to make sure they attacked him in terms that would win him votes.’

‘What did our MOPEers say about that?’

‘That they knew nothing about his plans. Anyway, Pratt would have been more likely to tell his MOPE pals in Belfast. He didn’t know our MOPEs well, apparently.’

He launched a new assault on his moustache. ‘I can’t think of any reason why he might have confided about the flag to anyone here. Especially to Willie Hughes, seeing he was his main rival for the seat.’

‘So who killed him, then?’

McNulty uttered a sound close to a groan. ‘Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Peadar’s less efficient than he lets on. But he’ll never admit to it. He doesn’t want the blame and the management won’t want to be sued for vast sums of money.’

‘Surely Pratt’s relatives wouldn’t have a case. Even in the wilder shores of American compensation culture somebody who climbs a flagpole illicitly to put up an illicit flag wouldn’t seem to me to have the strongest possible case.’

McNulty laughed. ‘You’re very new to this country, me boy. North and south, we’ve got a compo culture that’s the tenth wonder of the world. The MOPEs have the hang of it, but the DUPEs are learning fast.

‘However, let’s forget about Pratt for now and get back to trying to make some sense of the priest.’

Chapter Sixteen

‘It was a pretty boring afternoon for the most part,’ reported Pooley to Amiss over a pot of tea. ‘Almost made me briefly nostalgic for the fraud files. At least when I was working on them I could get up and walk around, make myself a cup of coffee and grumble to the others.’

‘Huh,’ said Amiss. ‘Don’t you talk to me about boring. You missed a paper by an EU enthusiast on how the challenge for the new millennium is to replace cultural nationalism by a Europe-wide renaissance if Brussels gets its directives right. Or something like that. I wasn’t listening, and I doubt if anyone else was. The main excitement was each of us being fetched and returned by Garda Bradley.

‘Laochraí and Willie weren’t there, being on the phone most of the time I expect. Pascal slept soundly until Bradley came for him and Jack dozed several times and got cross with me every time I woke her up. Wyn made a bit of an effort and talked
ad nauseam
and irrelevantly about the state of the Welsh language and Charlie Taylor produced his usual bland guff, after which Jack said enough was enough and gave us the rest of the afternoon off, thank God.

‘Now, what did you find out?’

‘Not much, except that Peader, the handyman, insists there was foul play. Apparently the halliard was tangled…’

‘The what?’

‘I suppose you were never a boy scout. The halliard is the rope that you attach to flags for raising and lowering. Peader and the gardaí agree that the only reason Billy could have had to use the ladder would have been because he had to disentangle the rope, which Peader insists he always left in good order. Add that to the fact that the bolt had to have been almost undone, and it looks like murder. Unless you think Peader is careless and lazy and a liar to boot.’

‘Is he?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘Let me get this clear. Billy turns up with the flag, thinking he just has to run it up the pole.’

‘Right. And then finds the tackle needs sorting out.’

‘There happens to be a handy ladder.’

‘Yes. In the little shed on the roof where Peader keeps a few tools, flags and so on.’

‘Billy climbs up the ladder.’

‘Tugs at the rope.’

‘And his weight detaches the bolt and sends the flagpole over the edge of the battlements.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Why didn’t he hang on to the rope?’

Pooley shrugged. ‘Lost his grip, I expect.’

‘You mean someone could have killed him simply by tangling up the rope and slipping the bolt.’

‘That’s right. They couldn’t have been sure it would work, of course. But there were no risks involved.’

‘And no one admits knowing he was planning this.’

‘No one.’

Amiss sighed. ‘What else emerged this afternoon?’

‘Nothing, really. McNulty asked everybody the same questions and got virtually identical answers.’

‘The questions were?’

‘The same as he asked you. “Did you know or had you heard of Billy and/or Cormac before you came here? If so, how well and what did you think of them? And was there any possibility that they were murdered because they were friendly with paramilitaries?”’

‘And the results?’

‘No one thought the paramilitary connections were relevant. Hamish, Jack, Kelly-Mae, Oki, Chandra and Wyn had never heard of either of them before they came here. You had heard of Billy because he was down on your list, Gardiner thought he was “a wee scutter” that he wouldn’t trust with sixpence, Pascal said everyone in Dublin believed him to be a fine man and Charlie had never met him but knew him as a man of peace who showed how enmity can yield to friendship.’

Amiss made a face.

‘Apart from Simon,’ Pooley went on, ‘only the MOPEs and Willie Hughes had heard of O’Flynn before coming here, though Gardiner said he knew the Jesuits were up to no good. Jack added a bit of light relief by adding that she couldn’t stand either of them, and that Billy was a hypocrite and O’Flynn a lunatic. Simon intimated rather more elegantly that he took the same view, but added that he felt that in the context of Northern Ireland, where law-abiding citizens were instructed by international opinion to chum up and govern with mass murderers, it would be a strange person who would single out those two as particularly deserving assassination. Oh yes, and he thought O’Flynn was a fool rather than a knave.’

‘Did McNulty find out if anyone knew about the relationship between Laochraí and the priest?’

‘The only ones who admitted to it were Liam MacPhrait and—to a lesser extent—Simon.’

‘How do you mean “to a lesser extent?”’

‘He had heard rumours. But he said there’s no lack of rumours about anyone at all prominent in Northern Ireland. Small place. Lots of scores to settle.’

‘How many people might be denying knowing about it but actually did?’

‘McNulty doesn’t know. He thinks the loyalists might have known since they’re all so thick with each other. But he doesn’t have enough evidence to convince even himself that this is a murder enquiry. It just makes it slightly more likely since anyone who knew they were involved would have guessed they’d be getting together at night.’

‘Why could it be predicted that he would go to her room? Why not the other way around?’

‘It couldn’t, which, of course, McNulty and I agreed, raises the possibility that somebody left the bottle there in the hope of getting Laochraí on her way up to him.’

‘Somebody acting for a jealous husband?’

‘Possibly somebody who just hated MOPEs.’

‘I can understand that motivation all too well,’ said Amiss with feeling.

‘More tea?’

‘Thanks, vicar. Now what happens next?’

‘I’m not sure. There are the autopsy reports to come, but what will they tell us that we don’t know? McNulty is stymied. And he’s under relentless pressure from Dublin to treat both these events as tragic accidents.’

‘I certainly hope they’re right. Though I’m not so sure they were tragic.’

‘You’re getting as cynical as Simon, Robert,’ said Pooley reprovingly.

‘Would you blame me? The conference is a complete nightmare, quite apart from the corpses. Jack and I were tempted to cancel the rest of the proceedings but we decided to stagger on to the bitter end. The plenary session, where we all talk of what we’ve learned, is tomorrow morning. Then we can all get the hell out of here.’

The baroness stuck her head through the door. ‘Ah, there you are.’ She looked behind her and waved. ‘Got them. Come on, Simon.’

Pooley jumped up and pushed two chairs towards the table. ‘Tea, Jack? Simon?’

‘No thanks. Just had some. Sorry you couldn’t be with us this afternoon, Rollo. It was a cracker.’

‘I’m sorry too. My master is very demanding. But Robert’s filled me in on what I missed.’

‘That’s why you two’ve been AWOL for so long,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Well that Eurocreep’s gone now and we’ve had a call to say this evening’s tame academic is on her way. I’d like to cancel her, but Simon’s persuaded me we can’t refuse to listen to her since she’s gone to the trouble to come to such a remote spot through driving rain.’

‘I don’t know anything about this woman,’ said Amiss, ‘except that she’s a last-minute substitute for someone famous.’

Gibson turned to the baroness. ‘She’s someone after your own heart, Jack. A woman who in her intellectual rigour, her majestic disregard for sacred cows…’

‘Talking about me, again?’ She smirked.

‘No, Jack. If cow you are, you would more properly be described as profane than sacred.’

‘How about a profane bull-in-a-china-shop?’ suggested Amiss.

‘Contrived,’ said the baroness. ‘Get on, get on, Simon.’

‘As I was saying…in her implacable opposition to woolliness of mind or meaningless rhetoric is a natural ally of yours.’

‘Oh, God. You mean she’s ghastly.’

‘Depends on how you feel about a feminist nun who peddles a Freudian analysis of Anglo-Irish relations. If I remember correctly, the Brits are the super-ego, Ulster Protestants are the subconscious id and the Irish are the struggling reality principle.’ He yawned. ‘Or is it the other way round? Anyway, I seem to remember reading that she believes Irish revolutionary movements have been directed at the male symbol of the crown because of the Fenian Oedipus complex about Britannia the mother.’

‘Surely the crown is vaginal,’ said the baroness, puzzled. ‘Anyway, how does that square with all our queens?’

‘I don’t know, Jack. She neither talks sense nor, in my experience, does anyone ever bother to challenge her. Feminist crap is cool these days in Ireland and most men are too timid to challenge it, even when it is the kind of unadulterated balls in which Sister Q specialises—if you’ll forgive the male imagery.’

‘What do you mean “Sister Q?”’

‘She used to be Sister Concepta Ligouri, but then she renamed herself. And no, I don’t know the significance of “Q.”’

‘After Sir Arthur Quiller Couch?’

‘Jack, I know you take pride in being triumphantly out-of-date,’ said Amiss, ‘but if I remember correctly, that particular “Q” was in his heyday nearly a century ago. I doubt if he is the inspiration for a radical nun at the beginning of the third millennium.’

‘Shall I sort her out?’

‘What’s a Freudian nun in the middle of all our other troubles? Let’s just let her talk and be grateful she’s the last torment to be visited upon us.’

The door opened and Gibson rose. ‘Ah, Sister Q. How very kind of you to come to help us at our time of trouble.’

***

‘Jaysus, you’re great crack,’ said Pascal O’Shea. ‘Will you have another?’

‘Certainly,’ said the baroness.

‘No, thank you,’ said Pooley.

O’Shea signalled a repeat order to the barman and then looked at the baroness and sniggered. ‘Fair play to you. You’re a fierce wicked woman and no mistake. That poor nun.’

The baroness looked defensive. ‘I was only asking her in a spirit of honest enquiry. It’s always seemed odd to me about Catholicism that rules about sex are laid down by men in frocks who’ve never had it.’

‘That wasn’t what upset her,’ said Pooley. ‘It was the next bit.’

‘You mean my straightforward enquiry as to whether being a life-long celibate mitigated against fully understanding Freud?’

‘You know bloody well that wasn’t all you said,’ interrupted Amiss. ‘You also asked if she, like Father O’Flynn, regarded celibacy as no more than an optional extra which progressive clerics could ignore. She’d only just heard of his death, so I’m not surprised she was outraged. You’d no right to invade her privacy like that. Or his, for that matter.’

‘Privacy? What right to privacy does anyone have if they go round the place talking about the castration complexes of the British establishment?’

‘I liked that question of Gardiner’s about the Catholic view of artificial insemination of cows,’ said Gibson. ‘Got her progressiveness, feminism and religion all in conflict.’

‘Where is Gardiner?’ asked the baroness. ‘I owe him a drink for that.’

‘Eating in his room, I expect,’ said Amiss. ‘He told me his friend’s wife had given him a wee box of buns and he looked crazed with lust as he left the room.’

‘Here he is now,’ said Pooley.

‘You’re right,’ said the baroness. ‘If I ever saw a fellow exuding the lineaments of satisfied desire, it’s him. Gardiner, Gardiner, come here. Jamsie, Jamsie, add a large Bushmills.’

‘I can’t stop, Jack. I’m away to my friends again.’

He waved and departed. The barman arrived with a groaning tray. Pooley began to protest when given another gin-and-tonic, but O’Shea waved at him dismissively. ‘A bird never flew on one wing, Rollo.’

‘Thanks, Jamsie,’ said the baroness. ‘You make an excellent Martini.’ She looked around the table. ‘Now what are we going to do tonight?’

‘Not the same as last night,’ said Amiss firmly.

‘Really? I wouldn’t mind going back to Nelligan’s. My swain might propose tonight.’

‘Which swain?’

‘The welly-man. He’s quite a man of the world you know. Told me he’d been to Dublin once. I concluded he was serious when he asked me if I’d ever thought of living in Ireland, had I any experience of living on a farm, bragged about his “quotas,” whatever that meant, and ended by enquiring if I fancied a bit of a coort.’

‘What’s a “coort?”’ asked Pooley.

‘A court,’ said O’Shea. ‘It was an invitation to go outside and fumble in the hay. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Jack. I’m afraid he’d be needing a substantial dowry, seeing that if you’ll excuse me saying so, you’re probably past child-bearing age.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I could always go to that Italian doctor.’ She looked at O’Shea sternly. ‘Are you suggesting that he is not simply a romantic who was swept off his feet by my girlish charms?’

‘He was swept off his feet a couple of times by your beefy arms rather than your girlish charms,’ grunted Amiss. ‘If you ask me, he thinks you’re rich. Your jewellery was not exactly understated for a Mayo pub on a Sunday night.’

‘He probably reckons you could swap your ring for a prize bull.’

‘Pascal, that amethyst is not to be included in any dowry. My friend Myles would be very very upset. He places great faith in its magical properties.’

‘Which are?’

‘Warding off the effects of alcohol.’

‘Is that so?’ enquired O’Shea. ‘I’d say I’d have to wear a tiara.’

‘Which effects does it ward off exactly?’ asked Amiss.

‘Ill-effects. You’ll have noticed that alcohol does me no harm.’

‘It does lots of other people harm if they’re in your company and you’ve been consuming it.’

‘That’s not what bothers Myles,’ she said complacently. ‘Nor me. However, I dare say you’re right. It might be unwise to visit the scene of past triumphs so soon. And I wouldn’t want to raise the poor fellow’s hopes, for I fear my other commitments mean I am unlikely to be able to find the time to be his bride.’

‘So what will we do tonight?’ asked O’Shea.

‘Sit in the bar with Sister Id,’ suggested Gibson gloomily.

‘Sister Id isn’t even staying for dinner,’ said Amiss. ‘She claimed rather unconvincingly that urgent business meant that she had, after all, to be driven straight back to Galway.’