He slipped the Canadian passport into the inside pocket of his jacket. Again he checked his recall on the dates and events of his new self. He didn't need an inbound airline ticket stub because Professor Levesque had come across as a foot passenger from Holyhead and he had one-wayed it to London from New York on a cheap flight.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Above the glasses, his hair was parted more to the centre now. The light Gore-Tex jacket and the lumberjack shirt added to a stereotype. Behind him, he noticed the suitcase he'd be leaving. Inside, neatly folded, was his suit. Everything else had fitted into the shoulder bag. For a few seconds he wondered if he had omitted anything from the routine. Yes, he had gone over the bathroom fixtures; the television, the suitcase. O.K. He turned and allowed his eyes to take in the room. The window? Yes. Door? Yes. Glasses or bottles? Gone.
He couldn't afford to worry about things like a hair in the bathroom. He zipped the bag. As he bent over, he felt the gun detach itself slightly from his chest. That'd have to go too but after he was on the boat. They could bellyache all they wanted about the trouble it was to get one for him and then him just dumping it. Bellyache, he thought, snared for a moment on memory. His father had used that word often. When he had cried on their first visit to his boarding school, his father had grabbed him by the arm:
"Don't bellyache. You'll look back and thank us." When he got clear, he'd find a way to do for McCarthy.
Kilmartin stood up.
"Gentlemen, I'll be staying in the station here while you listen on to this drivel. If you have any news for me, kindly relay it to me within the next half hour. Anything after that will be all but useless, I'm thinking."
Minogue saw embarrassment on the men's faces. They nodded. Minogue joined Kilmartin as he turned and walked through the door. As he closed the door behind him, Kilmartin murmured:
"Well, do you think they have the idea?"
Minogue didn't answer. Their driver, the sergeant, was leaning on the back of a chair in the canteen, smoking. The desk sergeant, who had come off duty but was hanging around for news, sat opposite.
"More tea, men?" he said
Minogue and Kilmartin declined.
"The back of the neck is what it is," their driver continued, putting out smoke as he talked.
"'Yank' my arse. Leading us up the garden path, he is," he muttered.
The off-duty sergeant nodded.
The talk dried up. Other policemen came and went in the canteen. When Minogue looked at his watch, twenty minutes had passed. He had thought of asking the driver for one of his cigarettes. Before he did, one of the three men who had sat with them listening to the questioning came in. He walked to their table. Kilmartin looked up sardonically.
"Well? Has the cow calved?"
"Sir. If you could step into the room beyond, we can brief you."
Kilmartin and Minogue returned. No sounds came over the speaker. So that was what they'd done, Minogue thought.
"The suspect has informed us that he believes this American may have more, er, significance than was first thought, sir."
"Go on," said Kilmartin.
"McCarthy stresses his minimal knowledge and involvement."
"And all the rest of it," Kilmartin said grimly.
"But he understands that the American is here to do with some transporting of something or other to the North."
"What exactly does that mean?" Kilmartin's voice rose.
"His guess is that this man is involved in weapons."
Kilmartin snorted and headed for the door.
"Let me talk to Mr Shakespeare and we'll have it out in detail. I know how to deal with the likes of him," he hissed.
The Special Branch officer moved to stop him and Minogue heard the man call out:
"That isn't possible right now, sir."
Kilmartin wheeled around and looked at him, then to Minogue.
"McCarthy is indisposed at the moment, sir. Fainted."
Kilmartin stared at the nervous officer blocking his way.
"But we have a better description of this Yank, sir."
"This hypothetical Yank, you mean. My money's on some gun-happy slug down from the North and Connors came on him."
"And thinks the Yank mentioned something about the Shelbourne Hotel, sir."
Kilmartin stepped back and looked to Minogue. Minogue noted the glimmer in Kilmartin's surly gaze now.
"Maybe there is something to this Yank then…" Kilmartin said.
"They'll know him at the Shelbourne, sir, if he's staying there. Nothing as sharp as a good desk-man in a fancy hotel, is there, sir?" the detective said, mollifying. His efforts did not break the cast of skepticism on Kilmartin's face.
Just before they reached Drogheda, a glaring sun appeared from between the evening clouds. It flooded the car with gold. It ran along beside the car, through the trees and the bushes, full on Agnes when they had fields to the west of them. Allen knew they wouldn't meet the sea again until close to Dundalk. By then it would be dark. Agnes' eyes were closed. He smelled a faint perfume in the car. The light set her hair a-dazzle.
Under the trees and in the ditches the shadows were broadening out. Already the sun couldn't get over a hedge here, the roof of a house there. Where the sun still hit fields, the green was luminous. They passed a tinker camp, the men on hunkers next to a fire. Every second or third vehicle was a lorry. The edges of the road were greyed by their passing. Sometimes Allen would find the mirror filled with the dinosaur front of an eighteen-wheeler, out of nowhere. When they stopped for petrol, the boy stood by the car looking over the inside, curious about Agnes.
"A good evening for travelling now," he said. "There'll be no rain."
"How do you know?" Allen said.
"Oh sure we've had our ration for the week. Sure wasn't it a terrible week? Wasn't I drownded myself here several times in the one day," the boy answered.
Allen heard Michael Jackson coming through the half open door beyond the pumps.
"I suppose," said Allen, "you might have something there."
When Allen sat back in the car, Agnes said:
"Where are we?"
"Near Drogheda. It'll be dark soon," Allen replied. "God," Agnes said yawning "Drogheda. This is the longest road in Ireland so it is."
Agnes looked out at the town. Already some streetlights were glowing purple, a prelude to the glare of yellowy light which disfigured towns all over Ireland. The sun was gone now. Overhead, puff carpets of grey clouds showed pink edges. The world was straining toward the west. As the car passed pubs, she saw shadows and soft lights in the windows. The shops and supermarkets were busy. Cars parked up on the kerb. Agnes thought of what Jarlath would have done tonight. He'd have suggested a foreign film probably. Reluctantly, Agnes would have agreed to go along. His callowness would make her feel guilty. Then she remembered that she had arranged to avoid a date with him by going to a friend's flat. She didn't want to go there, but she didn't want to encourage Jarlath either. An icy breath ran through her chest. To think that this could have happened. Was it only sinking in now?
She forced herself to think of Tuscany. A moon would be up. The stone walls would be warm. The sky would be full of stars. She could sleep in a barn or in the fields to be awakened at dawn. That was the way to live, sleeping from dusk to dawn. None of those noises at night, the sirens or the floodlights. La Luna, mi amore.
"Daydreaming, Agnes?" said Allen.
She glanced at him. What was different about him? She was too used to seeing him deliver lectures.
"A bit, I suppose."
"You think being restless is exclusively the preserve of persons under twenty-five? Or perhaps a sign of early senility?"
"Aye. We all could do with a break," she said.
Agnes thought of the city waiting for her, her bedroom, the telly with the news blaring out one more miserable day for the city. She had trouble remembering her father's face, seeing only the crumbling face of her mother. With no warning, her mother could be stricken helpless with crying. Watching T.V., reading a book or eating, her mother's face would suddenly contort. Agnes understood it was the commonplace things that could upset her, the vertiginous understanding that her husband was dead. No shaving soap in the bathroom, no other person in bed, no need to make sure the toast wasn't underdone. Agnes could comfort her mother again and again, but the weight seemed to increase.
Sometimes she felt that she was nothing, neither young or old. When would it all end?
The sergeant started up the car. Minogue sat in the front passenger seat. He felt Kilmartin's impatience as a palpable weight in the car. Minogue noticed that the sergeant's uniform was spotted with cigarette ash. His breath came across stale, penetrating.
"Well, the Branch didn't so much say it as let it be known," Kilmartin began. "They got a phone call. Somebody claiming that there's going to be a car going north with weapons aboard. Tomorrow. They think it might have to do with that other car or cars in that garage."
Minogue contented himself with looking out at the dusk over College Green.
"They know the heat's on. I don't doubt they want results fast," Kilmartin murmured.
"Yes," Minogue allowed. He was tired. Drifting through the traffic made him sleepy.
"They've bought into McCarthy's Yank business anyway. I still have me doubts. Yank or not, you can't persuade me there isn't a connection though," Kilmartin said.
"What?" Minogue said reflexively.
"The shooting in Blackrock. The place is gone to hell in a wheelbarrow. I can see the news tonight and the bloody headlines: 'Murderers still at large,' 'Armed men on the rampage in Dublin,' 'Gardai draw a blank in search for killers."'
"You think the same people are involved," Minogue said.
"Maybe not the actual same people. Did I tell you we got a rocket about being alert for new types of weapons and a new network for getting them in? That's what has the Branch looking for this mysterious Yank and taking crank calls seriously. The fella who called described a car that sounds like the one in the garage. And the way McCarthy was hinting about arms smuggling got them going in a big way," Kilmartin said.
"Well in anyhow: the other thing is a no-go. Those two fellas have gone to ground. Between me and you and the wall-" Kilmartin nodded in the direction of the sergeant's head, "-those shaggers are back in the North by now."
"Signs on," Minogue said.
"And as for the thing about the garage, well I'm sure we closed it down before anything became operational. I say it was a mistake to raid it," Kilmartin said.
Minogue elbowed onto the seat and turned to Kilmartin. He was wary of the sergeant driving because he would be all ears, like anyone else, for an inspector's candour. Minogue imagined the sergeant going home to his wife: 'Wait 'til I tell you what I heard today… '
Minogue was surprised to find himself alert. He noticed that Kilmartin was frowning at him. The front gate of Trinity College fell away behind the car, as the sergeant wheeled the car around into Dame Street.
Minogue's knees began to itch. He strained further to look out the back window at Trinity College receding behind them. It looked magical, a place apart. The lights gave it an air of churchiness. Students emerged from the archway, out onto the centre of a city which Minogue believed had gone mad. They could always go back in to the squares and the classic proportions, to the insulated clarity of that island. Stone buildings and edged lawns answered the bullydom of Ireland. But no: that was false, too facile. Minogue was thinking as a peasant. In the week he had been in and out of the university, he had felt it had a vulnerability, despite the intellectual and physical architecture which held it in place. No amount of pretty young girls with baskets on the handlebars of th^jr old bikes could stop history. No amount of paintings hanging down over the dining tables could exempt this place from the present.
Agnes McGuire carrying her terrible burdens. Mick Roche trying to work through the place, not cynical enough to give up on the well-to-do students there. And Allen, for all his academic manner, he was trying in his own way to change things. Was he jealous of Allen? Minogue recalled Agnes smiling briefly as she went off in Allen's car, under his care. Maybe it was that he, Minogue, had felt stuck on the sidelines again, a spectator to events, with Allen's swanky car hissing away to the funeral in the rain. Allen's car: Jesus, Mary and Joseph…
"Pull over here, if you please, Sergeant," Minogue said.
Kilmartin was staring at Minogue.
"That other car in that garage. You said whoever called gave a description which might match that one in the garage."
"The Mercedes, the canary yoke," Kilmartin said.
"No. The other one,"
"We don't know. A Japanese car, fancy, was the best we got on the one in the garage."
"And the one in the tip-off?"
"I don't know. A Branch man just told me it was awful like the description of the other one," replied Kilmartin.
"Are there any reports of stolen cars of that type?"
"Now, Matt, you know as well as I do… "
"But it was checked against the reported stolens, wasn't it?"
"No doubt. But, here, hold on a minute Matt. The one in the garage might have been legit anyway, a fella fixing a car. Anything. It was only that oul lad thinking he saw one. Let the Branch worry about it."
The sergeant was assiduously trying to prove he was deaf. Minogue opened the door.
"Sergeant, could I ask you a favour, please."
The driver's head shifted around.
"Anything I can do, Detective Sergeant."
"Would you find out what you can on the radio about this car business. Inspector Kilmartin here will furnish details."
"But Matt," Kilmartin leaned over to look under the roof as Minogue stepped out onto the kerb.
"That can wait. We have this thing on the boil."
"Sure what can we do about this evening, Jimmy, except, kill time waiting for something?" Minogue said.
He had actually been reprimanding in his tone, the driver realised. Now if he himself tried that with an Inspector…
"I'll be back in a few minutes," Minogue said. He began striding down the footpath toward Trinity.
As if Minogue's new-found vigour had by default led him to lassitude, Kilmartin slouched in the back seat listening to the driver. He was becoming aware that Minogue was more than merely contrary. Because Minogue did what he had just done so rarely, it appeared almost aggressive. Kilmartin decided he needed some time in the near future to sort out how to deal with Minogue. The sergeant was stroking his neck in anticipation of a reply on the radio.
"Takes 'em long enough," the sergeant muttered.
Kilmartin idly watched two drunken men staggering arm-in-arm down Dame Street. They didn't even notice the police car.
Then Minogue was climbing into the front seat, breathing heavily.
"'A magenta Toyota Cressida,' he said."
"What?" said Kilmartin.
"It's a magenta Toyota Cressida. It's on its way north tonight."
"What are you saying?" asked Kilmartin.
"All this talk of a big Japanese car. I was thinking about that McGuire girl, the Walsh boy's girlfriend. Allen gave her a lift to the funeral in a fancy car, I'm sure it was a Toyota, and I think it was a magenta colour. You know, the one you don't know if it's crimson or purple. I could kick meself, so I could."
"But how in the name of Jas-" Kilmartin began.
"— I asked one of the porters, one of the fellas who works in the college. He checked the parking passes off a list."
A voice yowled on the radio.
"No reported thefts of that type. A magnet… a magan-a magenta Toyota Cressida or Datsun. Over."
"Tell them," Minogue said. His wide eyes bored into Kilmartin's.
"Hold on a minute," Kilmartin leaned over. "Tell them what?"
"The suspect car is heading for the border."
"But the tip-off was for tomorrow, Matt."
The driver looked to Kilmartin.
"Over," the radio said.
"Allen has a car like that. He's gone up north to deliver a lecture. He left a day early. He's the one."
Kilmartin's frown bit deep into his forehead. "The professor fella who does the peace lectures?"
"Allen. Dublin registration. A Professor Allen."
He ate in McDonalds in Grafton Street. His throat was still tight, barely letting food down. The restaurant was full. He looked around and realised that almost all the customers were young people. The older folks didn't trust hamburgers. So this was freedom and progress. He looked down at the shoulder bag under the table and he thought back to his exit from the hotel. The shift had changed for the evening and he hadn't been noticed. He had peeled off the moustache in an alley. The glasses irritated the bridge of his nose. He could discard them later.
The food tasted the same as stateside. Near the bottom of his coffee cup, he decided that he should try to get out tonight from Dun Laoghaire. There was nothing else for it. Either he left tonight or he waited for a week or two. His disguise was foolproof up to the point of someone checking when he had entered the country. They'd never go that far.
He stepped back out onto Grafton Street and crossed onto the footpath which led to the Front Gate of Trinity College. Busses and cars swept by him. The lights of shops spilled out over the path opposite. He remembered that the ferry left at nine o'clock.
He felt quite alone for the first time since he had landed. This bothered him all the more when he wondered as he passed people if they knew he was carrying a gun or that he had killed someone. There was no one he could phone or say goodbye to. This is absurd, he thought: get some control. Nothing would be served by an attack of nostalgia on top of the fear. As he passed the front of the college, he noticed a police car turning into Dame Street. The doubts began to creep in again. What could McCarthy tell them if he was picked up? His thoughts turned to wondering how much surveillance there would be at the dock in Dun Laoghaire. Had they installed a metal detector there since he got the O.K.?
Ahead of him, the bustle of O'Connell Street lit up the bridge. A tinker woman with a baby shawled next to her breast sat by a cardboard box on O'Connell Bridge.
"A few ha'pence, sir, to feed the child," she said.
He walked by her thinking of O'Connell, the Liberator, with beggars in his liberated land. In the distance he heard a siren. It came from behind him, from College Green and it faded quickly.
As the police car sped up Dame Street, Minogue watched the red light spilling and wiping along the buildings. The siren seemed to vibrate inside the car. For a few moments he wondered if this was real at all. In five minutes he'd be aloft in a helicopter from Dublin Castle on the way to the border. Ridiculous, to be sure. Was that him who shouted at Kilmartin to get him a place on it with the Special Branch men? And why had he insisted so? He wanted to see Allen's face, to tell him something, not to ask him questions. Minogue didn't know what it was that he should tell Allen. His mind struggled, looking for a grip on some words.
"Have you ever been up in one of those things before?" Kilmartin asked.
"Never in my life," replied Minogue.
The car shuddered over the kerb and stopped abruptly at the gate to Dublin Castle. Walls loomed over the car. A uniformed Garda walked over to the car. The driver knew him. The Garda nodded his head and returned to the booth. The barrier lifted soundlessly. '^r
"Who owns it?" Minogue asked.
"Who else but the bloody army. They can get what they want these days."
Minogue stepped stiffly from the car. He was excited and nervous at the prospect of being whisked away into the night in this contraption. Kilmartin called out to him and he paused. Kilmartin half lay on the seat looking out under the window at Minogue. Looked like a child, Minogue thought.
"Matt. Don't bite any of your company in that whirlygig thing. Remember you're on the trip on sufferance. I'm a bit out of order insisting on you going along so don't poison the well for me. The Branch men will make the arrest and have him driven back to Dundalk most likely. I'll be arranging from this end that they give you a few minutes with him. You know this fella better than I do."
"So: observe," Minogue said
"Now you have it."
Minogue recognised one of the men who had sat with him in Pearse Street listening to McCarthy. He walked over to Minogue.
"Are you the one who hit the button on this?" he said.
"Sort of, " said Minogue, anticipating trouble.
"Be the living jases you must be some kind of magician. Would a bit of it rub off on me now?" he said.
Minogue smiled despite the excitement. It felt like he hadn't smiled for days. He fleetingly recalled the moments in Bewley's, the talk around the tea-table at home: worlds away.
He followed the Special Branch men out through the building to a tarmacadam pad. Eerily, a light helicopter sat there. To Minogue it looked like a big insect. Its blades were claws, its Plexiglass screen a giant eye. Two men in jogging suits stood next to it, smoking. In the floodlights the smoke writhed Hallowe'enish toward the machine. Both men looked up when Minogue and his companion neared the helicopter. Just like that, Minogue was thinking. We're going to walk into this thing, like a bus. One of the two eased into the seat and switched on what sounded like a ventilator fan.
"Are we right?" the other said.
"As right as we'll ever be," the Special Branch said. He looked at Minogue and said,
"It'll be cold, er… "
"Minogue. Matt Minogue. I'll be all right. How long will this yoke take?"
"We'll be landed and sitting in the customs post within fifty minutes. Less even."
"Be the hokey fly," Minogue marvelled. What was that expression? 'I have seen the future and…?'
As the craft lifted and bowed away over the city, Minogue was again stunned. It was incomprehensible that no wires held this thing up. The city was completely changed from here. It fell away under the belly of the helicopter like glowing embers of a coal fire. To the east the sea was in blue darkness. Ahead of them, then veering away, he saw runway lights at the airport. Minute moving lights of cars pulsed along the veins of this thing below. The lights petered out as they tended to the mountains. Minogue sat between the pilot and the Special Branch man. It felt as if he were in their care. The helmeted pilot was shockingly casual about it all, drawing lightly on the stick, commenting into the stalk microphone which stuck out from the gladiator helmet. Over the rotor noise, the Special Branch man shouted.
"I'm Scully, Pat Scully. I forgot."
Minogue nodded vigorously. This was like a carnival. He tried to identify the constellation of lights ahead of him. Swords? It occurred to him that he wasn't exactly sure what would be happening when they landed. Would they pick up Allen along the road or would they wait until the border? They had time, just about though. The porter at the Pearse Street Gate in Trinity said that Allen had taken his car about an hour ago. He couldn't have made it by then. He'd know better than to try an unapproved road especially after dark. Roving patrols of the British Army and SAS were on the move after dark.
"What's the story up ahead?" Minogue shouted into Scully's ear.
"We're all set up," Scully replied.
What did that mean? Minogue returned to thinking out the possible outcomes. Did Allen know? Allen would not hand over his car like that. It hadn't been stolen so Allen must have voluntarily given it over. Could it all be a coincidence though? What was there in it for Allen?
The pilot reached over and tipped Scully on the knee, then he pointed to a headset. Scully put it on. Minogue lip read the pilot saying 'go ahead.' Scully searched for a volume control but giving up, cupped hands over his ears. As he listened, he nodded several times. Then he said O.K. He looked over at the pilot who nodded once. Minogue noticed the pilot glancing quickly at him and then back to Scully.
"The car has been spotted. This side of Castlebellingham. Plenty of time," Scully shouted.
Minogue looked out over a town, marooned in light. A slash in the sky to the west was flooding a scarlet ribbon in the grey.
"Drogheda," the pilot said, pointing.
"There's someone else in the car."
"What?" said Minogue, leaning.
"There's someone else in the car. A woman," Scully shouted.
"What's the plan?" Minogue asked.
"We'll stick to the original," Scully announced and turned to look at the town passing below. Minogue looked out too. He followed car lights on the outskirts of town. They looked like a video game. A woman. Minogue's heart stopped, then a cold wash fell down through his chest. No, it couldn't be.
Minogue nudged Scully.
"Where will they be picked up?" he shouted. Scully paused before answering.
"At the border."
Minogue felt an alarm, like waking in the night to a strange sound. He stared at the side of Scully's face. Scully turned again.
"The situation on the ground," Scully shouted. "It may change. We have to be ready," he added, and returned to looking out over the Belfast road. Any minute now, they'd be overtaking the car.
The cold was biting into Minogue's shoes and under his chin. He no longer noticed the noise. He began to count but his heart was racing. He thought of Ravel and the tea at home in the oven waiting for him. Allen's face kept interrupting his images. Then he saw Agnes McGuire's face clearly in the darkness below.