Free The Death of an Irish Lover by Bartholomew Gill Page B

Ellen’s killer.”
    And her mother had broken down as well. After a while, McGarr and Riley withdrew, leaving them to their…what? Their sorrow? No, McGarr thought—having but one daughter himself—it was keener than that. More like desolation and the ruin of their lives.
    Quintan Finn’s parents lived on what could only be called an estate a few miles south of town. Built rather recently on a hilltop, the house was modern in design,with large bay windows on its four corners, rather like a glass castle, every pane of which was lit.
    “Don’t let the house fool you,” Riley advised as the Garda car fishtailed up the slippery slope. “He’s down-to-earth, Dermot is. If you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s got three degrees in what he calls plant nutrition. ‘Bull shit, more shit, piled high and deep,’ since it’s the fertilizer trade that bought this place. Dermot’s into it in a big way.
    “But it’s Honora, the wife, who wanted a spread like this. And she’s forever giving out to Finn for smelling like the money that bought it.”
    But neither knew the whereabouts of their son. And the father slumped into a seat in the posh living room that looked like something out of California when he learned why McGarr and Riley were searching for the young man.
    “What about the Gildays?” was his first thought; he was a short man with a wide once-powerful body and a significant paunch. His face was windburned and his hair white. “They must be—”
    “To hell with the Gildays,” the wife cut in. “What about Quintan, our son? Where’s he? Those Frakes—didn’t I tell you they’d brought their trouble with them? Himself even gave them jobs.” She pointed at her husband.
    “Isn’t that better than having them steal from me?”
    “Ah—see how he thinks.” She was a pretty woman in her early fifties with a trim body and a new perm. “He’d never think of calling you.”
    But Finn ignored her. “How can we help?”
    “Find your son and have him contact us,” said McGarr, handing Finn his card. “The sooner, the better.” He then asked if they had any recent photographs of their son.
    “Only the wedding pictures, and you can’t have those,” she snapped.
    Finn got up and retrieved several. With tears in his eyes, he handed them to McGarr. “I’ll find him for you, don’t worry.”
    As they made their way back to their car, the wife called to them, “What about the Frakes? Aren’t you going to arrest them? It’s them, you know. It couldn’t be anyone else. Quintan and Ellen were loved by everybody. Are! Are loved! ”
    Back at the barracks, McGarr scanned in the photographs and faxed the lot to Dublin, then told Riley to close up and go home. “I’ll stay,” replied the older man, pointing to the end of the room that led to cells that would have cots. “Finn is a man of his word, and he won’t sleep. And then, we’ll be having some information coming in from Dublin, I suspect.”
    McGarr nodded and bid him good night.
    Back at the inn, he found Tallon waiting up for him. McGarr raised a hand to his questions and made for the stairs. “Please—I’m knackered. We’ll talk in the morning.”
    “But, Janie—it’s out, it’s all over the country. We just had a phone call from an editor at the Times. He’s got their names and who they were, and he even knows it was the Frakes that did it and how they tried to kill you only this evening. Blew up your car.”
    Which stopped McGarr, since it could only have been Carson who had phoned the Dublin paper. Why? To put so much heat on his erstwhile comrades that they would have to leave the area and go to ground someplace else? Carson, an old fox who had said he could take care of himself. And was doing so.
    McGarr continued up the stairs.
    “After the Independent called and RTE, we took the phone off the hook. Peter—I implored, begged, pleaded with you to keep a lid on this thing, and now—”
    McGarr had closed the hall door and made