The Death of an Irish Lass Read Free Page B

through the backwash of the preceding wave and broke full on the cliffs, giving off a rumble that seemed to quake the ground beneath McGarr’s feet.
    Having heard about slides off the Cliffs of Moher in which cattle and farmers had plunged to their deaths below, McGarr looked in back of him to make sure the technical crew’s van had not yet arrived and then got down on his hands and knees to belly himself up to theedge of the cliffs. He removed his Panama hat and began edging himself forward.
    McGarr was a small man with a thick build and red hair gone bald on top. His features were regular, but his nose was perhaps a trifle overlong. His eyes were gray. He was forty-nine years old and today wore a short-sleeved white shirt, tan slacks, and dark brown brogues.
    Nearly seven hundred feet below him the surf boiled against the black cliff face. Sea gulls whirled at various levels, none having to flap its wings in the blast that pushed up from the sea and over the land. McGarr knew there were caves below there. During the eighteenth century they had been used as keeps for smugglers who in wood and tarred-canvas curraghs braved surf and rock and perhaps an enraged bull seal within the cave to avoid paying the king his tax.
    Off to McGarr’s right was O’Brien’s Folly. It was a granite turret that the foolish Irish M. P. Corny O’Brien had built in 1835 as a teahouse and observatory. If anything, it marred the clear sweep of the cliffs. McGarr could see tourists struggling against the breeze up the pathway toward the edifice. Others were, as he, crawling over a rock escarpment to peer below.
    That was when he saw the small amber-colored cap snagged in the gorse near his face. Using his handkerchief he picked it up, holding as little of its surface as possible. He held it to his nose—rye whiskey, no doubt about it. The proximity of this object to the cliff face made him wonder if May Quirk’s killer might have chucked the pitchfork off the cliffs. It seemed the handiest place. If so, it might be recovered, and, if recovered, it might reveal important details. But the project of descending from this eminence and then puttingdivers into the frigid waters was a tall order and a dangerous task. He’d have to word his request tactfully, pointing up the advantages such a massive undertaking might mean for the Technical Bureau.
    He heard a door slam and, looking behind him, saw that the technical crew had arrived. Easing himself away from the cliff, he stood and walked toward them.
    Chief Superintendent Tom McAnulty himself was in charge of this van. “Just keeping myself in touch with my boys,” he told McGarr. McAnulty headed the Technical Bureau (ballistics, photography, fingerprints, and mapping) and was usually lodged behind a desk at Kilmainham in Dublin.
    “But on Sunday?” McGarr asked.
    “Got the wife and kids in the car in Lahinch. We were just on the way to the folks’ place in Kilbaha.”
    “On holidays?”
    “Have been for a week.”
    McGarr could tell from the way his men were glancing at McAnulty that he was the last person they had expected to see. McAnulty was also a short man, but he had a thick shock of black hair and a busy manner. He was known for keeping tabs on the slightest move his men made. They respected him for being a gifted professional, but they grumbled whenever he tried to do their jobs for them.
    McGarr showed him the cap, and McAnulty called a sergeant over to take it away. McGarr then posed the question of a search effort below the Cliffs of Moher.
    “Now that’s a challenge,” said McAnulty.
    His men, who had been listening with half an ear as they went about their duties, swapped glances.
    “Plenty of publicity for the Technical Bureau in it, too, I should think.” McAnulty’s small dark eyes werealight now. He liked the idea. “You know, we’ll get Des Moore from the Sunday Independent . Have his cameraman Hogan get some pics of my men rappeling down the side of the cliff.