To the Death

Three minutes later, the clerk came in search of him and handed him the twenty-two euros in change. Ravi thanked him and tried not to look at him, but he was now probably firmly in the memory of the clerk.

The train ride up through beautiful Kilkenny and County Carlow was picturesque all the way. The track followed the River Barrow for several miles and then swerved right across Kildare before following the Grand Canal into Dublin. Ravi arrived in Heuston Station, just south of the River Liffey along the quays, at 10:15 P.M.

He stepped out of the station and into a dark shop entrance and dialed Shakira’s number. She was sitting in her room at the Merrion, watching television, and she answered immediately.

“Be quick, Shakira,” he said. “I’m in Dublin. Meet me at the Mosque, tomorrow morning at 11 A.M. Where are you?”

“I’m in the Merrion Hotel, around the corner from St. Stephen’s Green.”

“Good girl. Don’t be late.”

Shakira almost went into shock. All these weeks waiting to see him, and now he just said “Good girl” and vanished into the night. What was that all about? She was on the verge of stamping her foot in temper when the phone rang again.

She answered it immediately, and a voice just said, “I love you,” before the line went dead.

She was not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. And she chose the latter. With happiness. That he was safe, and he loved her, and tomorrow they would be together.

Ravi too was discontented with the fifteen-second duration of their call. But he had to adhere to that rule, because that rule meant the call could not be heard, traced, or recorded. Ravi was keenly aware that the National Security Agency in Maryland had tapped into Osama bin Laden’s phone calls and often listened in on the terrorist mastermind talking from his cave to his mother in Saudi Arabia. If they could eavesdrop on the great Osama, they could locate him. Fifteen seconds only.

He had the name of a Dublin hotel, and he flagged down a cab before it drove into the station and told the driver to take him to the Paramount Hotel, corner of Parliament Street and Essex Gate. The place had a Victorian façade, but inside it was all 1930s, very comfortable, and Ravi thankfully checked in. Last time he had slept had been in the submarine, and dearly as he would have liked to join Shakira in the Merrion, he thought he might get more sleep this way, and anyway he did not wish to be seen publicly with her in a place where staff might recall them.

Tomorrow morning he would risk watching the television news.

0900 Tuesday 17 July Skibbereen Garda Station

Detective Superintendent Ray McDwyer decided he needed help. The wound to Jerry O’Connell’s forehead was something he had never seen before. The bone was completely splintered between the eyes, and the nose bone had been driven upward and into the brain with tremendous force. The crushing blow to the forehead could have been delivered by a blunt instrument, but there was no sign that any implement whatsoever had been used on the nose.

Ray had spoken to the police pathologist, and he too was mystified. And together they decided that there was something all too precise about this killing. The murder had been carried out by an expert, someone who knew precisely what he was doing. There were no signs of a struggle, no other bruises, no abrasions. The killer had taken out Jerry O’Connell instantly, with the minimum of fuss.

At twelve minutes after nine o’clock, Ray McDwyer phoned London and requested help from New Scotland Yard, Special Branch.

At first Scotland Yard wondered what all the fuss was about, the murder of a dairy farmer in a remote spot on the Irish coast. But Ray was persuasive. He told them he thought they were dealing with a highly dangerous character, who might have come in from the sea and might have bigger things on his mind than knocking over a dairy farmer. And after about ten minutes, the duty officer at the Yard was inclined to agree. “We’ll send someone over,” he said, “direct to Bantry. This morning.”

Twenty minutes after Ray put down the phone, a local farmer, Colm McCoy, walking his dog, found Jerry’s truck hidden in the birch trees. He’d already seen the Cork Examiner and knew about the murder and that the truck was missing. The newspaper had specified there were four large milk urns in the back, and Colm knew what he’d found.

He called in to the Garda Station, and ten minutes later two police cars turned up, with four officers including Ray McDwyer himself. Behind them came a tow truck to haul Jerry’s vehicle out.

“Touch nothing,” said Detective McDwyer. “Take it away and have them check for fingerprints. Then tell the Milk Corporation to pick up the cans, dispose of the milk, and return them to the O’Connell family.”

Meanwhile, back at Crookhaven, officers in a Coast Guard launch were calling on every yacht and fishing boat in the harbor, asking everyone aboard if they had seen any strangers, either afloat or on land.