The Death of an Irish Lass Read Online Free Page B

place.” He meant the Garda barracks.
    “But where are you?”
    “Lahinch, County Clare.”
    Noreen had heard “Lynch.” She repeated it.
    “No, no. La -hinch.” McGarr spelled it out.
    She got it that time.
    They shouted their good-byes and rang off.
    When McGarr got back into the pub he found that Michael Daly had bought him another whiskey. Daly said, “How can she meet you in the regular place when she didn’t recognize the name?”
    McGarr raised his glass, over the lip of which he said, “You didn’t tell me you were a detective.”
    “Nor did you, though I’m not.”
    McGarr had underestimated the farmer.
    “What did you say your last name is?”
    The bartender and several patrons nearby had pricked up their ears.
    “McGarr.”
    Daly nodded, then glanced at the others. “ Peter McGarr,” he said in a loud voice, as though he had announced a race winner.
    Talk had quieted considerably in the pub now. McGarr was well known to most of his countrymen, the reputation he had developed while working for Interpol and, earlier, Criminal Justice in Paris having preceded him to Ireland. Since assuming the post of Chief Inspector of Detectives with the Garda Soichana, McGarr had hardly passed a week without his picture being in at least one of the national newspapers or on the telly.
    Now that they knew who he was, McGarr decided he’d pursue the business at hand. “Who else drinks Canadian Club?” he asked the bartender.
    He didn’t even have to look around. “You’re the only man, and I’ll advise you to go slow on it, for that’s the only bottle I got.”
    There was hardly a drink left in it.
    “That’s because a short, fat man dressed in a tan cashmere overcoat and blue suit put a dent in it last night,” said McGarr.
    The bartender raised an eyebrow.
    Somebody at the other end of the now quiet bar said, “I told you that fellow was a bit of a chancer.”
    McGarr had lucked out. The men who were here this morning were sure to have been present last night. That the pub was like a social club for them McGarr didn’t doubt.
    Said Michael Daly, “That’s not all that he put a dent in, neither. Jasus, he nearly run me down last night, and I noticed he had hit something with that beautiful new car of his. It was a darling machine, so it was.”
    “A Jaguar XJ12L, cream in color.”
    “The very same,” said Daly. “But he’d bashed the back fender all to blazes.”
    The pub was so quiet now McGarr could hear water dripping from a tap onto sheet metal in back of the bar. “Are you sure?”
    “It makes it the more tragic having that happen to a big white machine with such lovely lines. That’s the sort of car on which a small scratch stands out like a mortal sin. But a folded fender! It makes you want to curse the owner.”
    “And he was a man you could curse, too,” said another man. When everybody turned to him, he added, “Flashy and bloated. Had a way of speaking that put me in mind of the bawl of an ass.”
    “How many drinks did he have?”
    “Three quick ones,” said the bartender. “He was half seas over as it was. And he tried to con a fourth out of me as well. And him with that coat and car and all. I told him his trade wasn’t wanted, and if he hadn’t been so quick with his glass I would have taken that from him too.”
    The men in the barroom agreed with him. The flashy Dublin fellow had been pretty much of a bad type.They then quieted again and waited for McGarr to ask the next question.
    “Was he alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “And in the car, too,” Daly added. “I only saw one head. His. Sort of neckless and piggy, if you know what I mean.”
    “He didn’t happen to buy a full bottle of Canadian Club from you before he left, did he now?”
    “He did not!” The bartender straightened up and smoothed down his white apron that was stained from heading pints of stout.
    “Could he have bought a bottle of Canadian Club in some other public house in Lahinch?”
    “Indeed he