The Death of an Irish Lover Read Online Free Page B

nodded. “Him. Pascal.”
    “How did you know him?”
    “He stayed here often.”
    “How often?”
    Her face was now running with tears, and she had to pause to blow her nose. “Once a month, since we opened. He was, like you. A chief of police.”
    “What about the woman?”
    She shrugged. “Of course, I knew her too.
    She’s”—there was a pause; she shook her head—“from town.”
    “Did they use this room, like we see them here, often?”
    “Perhaps. I don’t know. He always asked for this room. We don’t pry. What he did, he did.”
    “How long would he stay?”
    There was another shrug and a sigh. She was a rangy woman with square shoulders that a thin shift-like garment made all the more obvious. But it was equally apparent that, although not portly, she had chosen the costume to conceal her torso. Some tufts of hair had escaped from the dark bun at the back of her head.
    “At least three days. Sometimes a week, depending.” There was another shrug and a sigh.
    “Depending on what?”
    Her doleful eyes again met McGarr’s. “Oh—many things. He’d come for a holiday. For…women.” She wrenched her eyes away. “But usually it was the fish. The eels. Who was poaching them. Who was stealing from the licensed fishermen and the fishery, he would say. The IRA. Pascal would investigate those things.”
    McGarr remembered a police report that he had scanned maybe a year earlier. It said that former IRA toughs from the North, attracted by the huge prices that Shannon River eels could command, had tried to muscle in on the industry.
    They had roughed up legitimate fishermen and stolen their catches, then demanded protection money from others. Even poaching, which required some actual work, was not beyond them, but only when the eels were running strong.
    “You knew Mr. Burke well.”
    She only stared at McGarr in a way that he interpreted as an acknowledgment.
    “How do you think this happened?”
    Her eyes closed, and her nostrils flared, as though trying to fight back tears.
    “Who did this?” McGarr encouraged.
    “Are you going to do as Tim asked?”
    “I’m no fan of the press, but you must understand—I have to ask questions.”
    Her eyes opened; she nodded. “The thugs, the IRA.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “They’re bastards, gangsters. They’ll do anything for easy money. You must know so yourself.”
    He knew that some former regular IRA—having abandoned their ideals and with no trade or occupation beyond the cudgel and the gun—had turned to crime. Gangsterism. Because they understood organization. “Anybody in mind?”
    “Manus Frakes. And his brother, Donal.”
    McGarr turned his head to the sergeant, who nodded; he knew them.
    “They stay here?”
    “They have, but not now.”
    “How could somebody have entered this room and done this without you or your husband having known?”
    “I was busy over in the inn with our fishing guests, I have my hands filled there. I never come here.”
    “What about your husband? Where does he work? What are his duties?”
    She only shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”
    McGarr remembered Tallon having to unlock the door into the archway from the inn and then unlock thesecond door into the B&B quarters. “Is there free passage up onto this floor?”
    She shook her head. “The doorway to the stairs is in the bar. It’s locked. A guest either has to use his passkey, or the barman can buzz it open.”
    McGarr pointed at the bed. “Was this woman registered with this man in this room?”
    She shook her head. “No. I checked. You know, after—”
    “Did you know she was up here?”
    “No. But even if I did, I wouldn’t have suspected that.” With her chin she gestured toward the bed. “Ellen was newly married, and they were colleagues. Why shouldn’t she come here? Perhaps they had something to discuss.” A tear gathered on her high cheekbone before tracking down her face. “But…this. I never suspected.”
    “Was it