their complimentary map. That’s all.”
Sergeant Bryson sipped tea, happy for a bit of a mystery. He felt competent and pleased with himself, the sunny weather, and his job. He was twenty-one, narrowly built, and wore his dark blue uniform with style, his stomach held in to do the uniform justice. He loved his life.
The Ballynagh police station was a glass-fronted room, twenty feet wide. It was on Bishop Street, the main street of the village, and across from O’Malley’s Pub. When the wind blew from the east, it smelled of beer.
“Petrol?” O’Hare asked.
“Near empty. Could’ve made it to Dublin. Just.”
Inspector O’Hare ran a guiding finger on the car-for-hire contract. “Lars Kasvi, 19 Vuorikatu, Helsinki, Finland. A Saab, automatic shift. Rented at the airport in Dublin, so he might’ve come by way of England. Heathrow. He got Murray’s 10-percent discount for drivers over fifty-five.”
The phone rang. It was Chief Superintendent O’Reilly of the Murder Squad at Dublin Castle. “Strangled,” O’Reilly said. “Wallet was in his pants pocket. Lars Kasvi, fifty-eight, Finnish. Married, invalid wife, children, grandchildren, he—”
“Kasvi.” Just as O’Hare had suspected. “Lars Kasvi left a yellow Saab from Murray’s on the access road near Castle Moore yesterday morning. We just had it hauled in.”
“That right? A minute, O’Hare.”
O’Hare waited. He could hear Chief Superintendent O’Reilly talking to someone, a murmur of voices. Then O’Reilly came back on the wire.
“O’Hare? We’ve got his business notebook with names and addresses. Buyer of woolen goods for Stockmann’s in Helsinki. Stockmann’s is the biggest department store in Finland; fills an entire block. Mr. Kasvi was on a buying trip. We’ll check his sources in Cork, Limerick, Wicklow, and so on; might turn up something. He visited six counties.”
“Any theory? Though it’s still too early—”
“Right. But his wallet was empty. Only a couple of pounds in a pants pocket. Robbery a possible motive. So many teenagers lately getting high on Ecstasy, other drugs, needing money. Aside from that, I’ve been in touch with Helsinki. Kasvi was a heavy drinker. Also, in Helsinki, given to picking up women in Sibelius Park. Has a snow white polar dog, his companion. Change that to past tense.”
“Strangled,” O’Hare said. “So it would have to have been a man? The killer?”
“Or a woman. Mr. Kasvi had such a high level of alcohol in his system, he couldn’t have fought off a mosquito. Or let’s say a woman of average strength. Maybe no bigger than the young woman who found the body. That American woman.”
“Miss Tunet. Miss Torrey Tunet.”
“Yes, Superintendent.” O’Hare nodded into the phone. He would, of course, check Miss Tunet’s background. Routine.
* * *
At seven-thirty, Inspector O’Hare telephoned the news of the dead man’s identity, and the confirmation that he had been murdered. By dinnertime at Castle Moore, when Rose brought the bucket of ice into the library for the before-dinner drinks, they all knew.
“God! Murder! ” Winifred Moore said, grinning. She raised her drink, which was vodka, and looked around the library at the others. “Here’s to civilization on planet Earth … I’m starved; it’s almost eight o’clock. I could eat a cow. Or a sheep.” From her place near the library fireplace, she glanced at Luke, who was drinking a Coke with a twist. “You an alcoholic?”
“Yup.” He never hid it. Let people make of it what they would. In the bull’s-eye mirror above the library fireplace he eyed Torrey Tunet. She looked tired and sober. It irritated him that tiredness became her, softened something in her. She wore wide-cut, black satin slacks and a red silk knitted sweater that clung to her delicately curved body. He thought of his enraged throwing of the stone through the windshield years ago in North Hawk. She knew it had been him because