You’re right! Jesus!”
“I told you, see?” He let the van coast by the restaurant, his foot on the clutch.
“Who’s the one with him? He looks like he was in a row.”
“Never saw him before. Here, do you think he’s an informer who got the shite beat out of himself at the station or something?”
The driver took a deep breath.
“There. I told you he was down here undercover. He’s Clare, so he wouldn’t stick out.”
“Shut up a minute!”
“Well, how come he’s back, then?”
“Jamesy Bourke getting shot, maybe.”
He turned the van into Cornmarket and stopped. The wipers began to squeak on the window.
“No, it isn’t! It’s because of the fucking German the other night! They’re sending in a spy-”
“Jases, get some sense, would you!”
“Well, what’s your bloody explanation then?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured, “I just don’t know.”
“I’m telling you! It’s too much of a coincidence.” The passenger began squeezing his thumb again. He held it up to the windscreen. The streetlight showed the nail black.
“It’ll fall off and a new one’ll grow under it,” he murmured.
“Maybe we can find out more about him,” said the driver. “I’ll phone and ask.”
His passenger gave a scornful whinny.
“Run to that bollicks? Christ, us doing all the work and taking the risks. What’s he going to tell us, for fuck’s sakes? To go and hide?”
The driver was too tired to get angry. His passenger stuck his thumb in his mouth.
“Come on and we’ll go for a pint,” he grunted around the thumb.
“No, I’m going to go home and phone. Where will you be later on?”
“Up in O’Loughlin’s. Miss Ireland’s on tonight.” The driver looked over into the shadows where his friend sat. “That’s as near as you’ll get, is it?”
Minogue left Hoey at Mrs McNamara’s door. The rain seemed to have eased off. The television glowed behind the curtains in the parlour. Mrs McNamara might well drag Hoey away to watch Miss Ireland while she poured tea into him. There she could pry at leisure and not be rushed into indiscreet questions.
The Inspector felt the weariness return to his shoulders. He fought free of a belch from deep in his diaphragm and grimaced at the greasy aftertaste. He let the Fiat coast lumpishly through the narrow streets before he drew it next to the curb by Crossan’s office. He honked once and saw the light being extinguished in Crossan’s office. The lawyer came down the steps two at a time.
“Such a night,” said Crossan with a hiss. “We’ll be drowned. Go out the Gort Road. I’ll give you the billy when we get near to the Howards.”
A mile outside town, Crossan jabbed a finger toward two stone piers. The gates had been drawn back. The house was out of sight of the road. Minogue turned onto the avenue and felt the Fiat sink slightly into the pebbled drive. The swish of the stones under the tires made him think of the steel-hooped broughams of the gentry cutting lines in gravel raked daily by servants. The headlights swept over old trees, rhododendrons and a white metal railing which led to the front of the house. Minogue parked by a white Audi and stepped out. The rain had let up but the gardens and grounds around the house seemed to be waiting for more. Sounds persisted: drips and pats, the gurgling of a gutter close by, the wet hiss of a car passing on the road below the house. The earth released smells of damp, decaying leaves.
The Howards’ residence was two storeys over a high cellar which could be entered through a door under the steps. Tall windows to both sides of the front steps formed oblongs of yellow on the face of the white house. Flower beds of turned sod with rose bushes recently cut back fronted the house. White wrought-iron chairs surrounded an elaborate table on a bed of cut stone to the side of the house. A lorry’s air brakes squealed on the road. Crossan slammed his door hard, a gesture whose intent Minogue was not sure of. His toes sank back into the pebbles as he trudged toward the steps, making him lean forward to gain some momentum.
“Grand spot,” he tried on Crossan.
“The White House,” grunted the lawyer.
Minogue gained the foot of the steps and looked back. The lights of Ennis twinkled between the trees.
“Don’t feel you need to doff your cap here and you in from the wilds of Rossaboe,” said Crossan skipping up the steps. Half-way up the flight he paused and scraped his sole on the edge of the step.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Minogue strained his eyes. After a few seconds he could see the spots on the steps.
“Watch out,” said the lawyer, still scraping. “The slugs are out after the rain.”
Crossan reached the top of the steps and hit the bell with his fist. Minogue decided against voicing the gibe that came to his mind: a lawyer in a hurry to knock on a door could only mean someone’s misfortune. Minogue was half-way up the steps when Sheila Howard opened the door. She watched him ascend and Minogue felt as if he were floating up. He tried to keep his breathing regular by using his nose alone, but the breath came in whistles. He became acutely aware of the condition he was in. His hair and shoulders were still damp from stepping in and out of cars and houses and pubs. Hoey’s cigarettes, the smell of the Fiat. Have to get a new car, damn it. He wished he had bathed and shaved and done his hair and brought fancy clothes with him down from Dublin, changed his shoes at least…
“Aloysious,” he heard her say. “And…the Inspector.”
Crossan’s voice was a bark of forced humour.
“But, sure, let him in anyway, will you?”
Minogue’s impressions collided with the thoughts and feelings welling up inside. He stood in the doorway feeling like an unkempt supplicant. A scent of flowers wafted out from the interior. She stood aside near Crossan and waved Minogue in. He swallowed, glanced and nodded at Sheila Howard before walking into the hallway.
“I’ll take your coats here,” she said, and closed the door. Minogue wished she wouldn’t. A stairway curved up to a landing overhead. Polished wooden floors ran through the hallway and then disappeared under what the Inspector took to be a Persian carpet covering much of the floor of the front room to his left. Track lighting bathed the hall but the peach-coloured walls softened its glare.
“Miserable old day, isn’t it?” said Sheila Howard. Minogue pivoted around and stole a glance at her back. Her hair was tied up in a loose pony-tail and her jeans were faded. He guessed her pastel red polo-neck was lamb’s-wool. As she stretched into the cloakroom, Minogue looked down to see her bare heels stand out of her shoes. Crossan had made no reply to her. Minogue felt that he should fill the vacuum.
“Par for the course, I suppose,” he said.
“Are you a golfer?”
“Well, no, in actual fact.”
“Golf is for iijits, Sheila,” Crossan interrupted. “Hell is full to the brim of golf courses. Saving your husband and all that. I know he only bought his clubs to play with the tourists out in Lahinch.”
Steps sounded softly and Dan Howard appeared in a doorway to the right. He took off his glasses with a smile, folded the newspaper and plugged it under his arm.
“Come in, can’t ye,” he said. He reached out for Minogue’s hand.
The Inspector sat in a heavily upholstered chair by the fire and made a quick survey of the room. High ceilings and long windows gave him a sense of comfortable spaciousness. Elaborately flowered plasterwork radiated from the centre of the ceiling, over an unlit chandelier. The antique furniture, few of the pieces with a shiny finish, suggested elegance without appearing lavish. Minogue’s amateur but wary eye recognised one of the paintings as a Paul Henry. The only clear concession to ego, he thought, was a writing bureau with elaborate inlay placed strategically by the window. At least it was covered in papers. Howard sat forward on the edge of a high-backed sofa.
“Something to wet your whistles, men?”
“Glass of Paddy,” said Crossan. “Nothing tricky, now.”
“Any Irish,” Minogue said. “Jamesons if it’s easy to hand.”
“I’ll get it,” said Sheila Howard. She walked to a cabinet and turned a key. Minogue spotted a wide array of bottles. She took tumblers from behind another door and began pouring whiskey. Then she took a small, ornate pail and left the room. Ice, Minogue realised.
Howard spoke as though responding to a question which no one had asked. “The time of year, all right.”
He ran his fingers back through his hair once and yawned. Minogue found more comfort in the chair and his nervousness began to ease. He looked at the turf burning vigorously in the fireplace.
“Do you mean there’s an election coming?” asked Crossan. “Or with Captain Moonlight and his raiders out in the hills?”
Minogue decided that Crossan’s tone was a way of keeping an edge on conversation with people he knew. Howard fobbed off the sarcasm with a flick of his head.
“I meant the weather and the season that’s in it,” he said.
“Ye’re well in out of the weather here,” Crossan said. “A glass of whiskey, a turf fire and all, begob. Ye’re truly a man of the people, Dan Howard. Where’s your high hat and your shillelagh, but?”
Sheila Howard returned with the ice-pail and a jug of water. Minogue looked up at her in the doorway and felt his belly tighten again. She rubbed her hip against the door to close it.
“What’s that about an election?” she asked.
“Alo’s fishing,” Howard said. He winked at Minogue. “But the bait is old.”
“Alo” from Howard, “Aloysious” with its full burden of ironic grandeur from Sheila Howard. The fancier name to keep Howard at bay, Minogue reflected. She placed the ice and water on the cabinet while she plucked one of a nest of tables from next to the sofa. The phone rang in the hall. She held her hand up before her husband rose.
“The Chief?” Crossan asked. “A summons to higher office in Dublin?”
“Hardly,” Howard answered easily. “More likely someone who thinks I can diddle the Revenue Commissioners for income tax or get their road tarred again.”
Sheila Howard closed the door to the hall. Crossan pursued Howard with the pushy mischief which Minogue knew was playing to the gallery.
“And can’t you do it, so?”
“Ah, now, Alo, that class of thievery is well beyond a TD. For that you’d need the services of a barrister.”
Crossan guffawed and his eyelids slid down a little. He sipped from his glass.
“Damn fine, I’d have to say,” he said, and smacked his lips. “The duty-free always tastes better.”
Howard looked sympathetically to Minogue.
“Familiarity breeds…and the rest of it.”
“With the exception of being married to the right person, I imagine,” Minogue offered.
“Making a virtue out of a necessity there,” scoffed Crossan.
“Aren’t you going to tie the knot yourself one of these days, Alo?” Howard asked.
Minogue found himself liking Dan Howard’s easy retorts.
“Tie the noose, you mean,” answered Crossan. “Or the yoke, maybe.” He nodded and held the tumbler against his chin as though considering sage advice.
“So as the women of Clare can sleep easier,” Howard observed. “Or at least forget their daydreaming and attend to their louts of husbands.”
Minogue smiled. Crossan seemed to take the repartee in his stride. It must be a friendship of sorts. Rivalry? Crossan put on a melancholy expression.
“Ah but sure, how would we bring up the children?”
Howard laughed and rested his head on the sofa-back. An older joke shared, Minogue believed, Howard rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger and then looked at Minogue.
“Alo digs with the other foot, I suppose you know,” he said.
Minogue remembered Eilo McInerny’s mention of it and nodded.
“Hence the expression ‘footless’ in relation to the amount of drink needed on this island,” said Crossan in a dry tone. “When we want to get beyond considerations of religion. Or lack thereof.”
Howard stayed with the quickening pace of the exchange. “Are you lapsed, is it, Alo?”
Crossan’s expression turned grave and mischievous. “More in the nature of prolapsed,” he murmured. “Herniated, you might say, from carrying such a heavy burden… Hiberniated, I suppose you’d say.”
Howard chortled and looked at the Inspector.
“I used to spend a lot of time and effort persuading Alo that he wasn’t an outsider. Then I realised he was milking me for my inherited faults.”
“Such as?” Minogue asked.
“Oh, you know. Having a pet Protestant, that sort of thing. We’re quite sophisticated here as regards the psychology, you know.”
“For being townies,” Crossan qualified.
“Maybe not as down-and-out cute as the people of west Clare proper,” said Howard. “Rossaboe people, now, they’re cute hoors.”
So he knows me and mine, thought Minogue. He yielded to the polite dig which Howard had used to place him so that he could allow it to boomerang back to Howard with more velocity.
“Cuter still after living in Dublin awhile,” he said.
Crossan spoke as though addressing a jury timid of him.
“Aha, yes. Well, I’d have to admit that being a God-fearing Protestant born, bred and starved here in Clare has its moments. Oh, yes. The urgency of the task of survival came to my mind as a newborn in the crib. ‘Litigate!’ the Lord bade me. ‘You’ll never want for a crust among such a disputatious people.’”
The Inspector joined in Howard’s laughter.
“There are said to be poor Protestants in Ireland,” Crossan was saying, and he sniffed at the rim of his tumbler. “Silk knickers and no breakfast. A romantic might consider that being an outsider.”
“Was that how you found your niche looking after the outsiders and vagabonds in matters criminal?” Howard goaded.
“If I do me job right, they don’t become criminals, Your Honour,” Crossan shot back.
“Alo’s a ticket,” said Howard to Minogue.
From the hall the Inspector heard Sheila Howard’s tone as she spoke into the phone. The fire and the whiskey had warmed his bones and driven away the creaking dampness that had been with him all day. Crossan finished his drink and let the ice-cubes fall back to the bottom of his tumbler.
“Well, now. In the course of a conversation, I explained Jamesy Bourke to this Guard here. Well, the best I could… So when Jamesy was shot and killed, I phoned his nibs here to see what the Dublin Guards might think.”
Howard listened with a frown of concern and nodded occasionally.
“And the answer is-nothing,” Crossan went on. “The Guards here are handling the matter themselves. We had this fact confirmed this very afternoon when we bumped into none other than Superintendent Tom Russell below at the station here in Ennis.”
Howard folded his arms.
“That kind of procedure or jurisdiction is reminiscent of another episode in Jamesy Bourke’s life,” Crossan murmured. He paused when the door opened and Sheila Howard entered the room.
“Sorry,” she said. She sat sideways on the sofa next to her husband. Minogue noticed that she had no drink yet. Howard scratched his scalp.
“Yes, well, the poor divil is at rest now,” he added.
Sheila Howard had picked up on the changed atmosphere, Minogue noted. She sat very still, her expression unchanged. Crossan did not conceal his cynicism now.
“The light of heaven to him.”
“His people have a plot above in the old church ground in Portaree,” Howard said. “I think we can see him put with them there.”
Crossan started to say something but stopped. Sheila Howard glanced at him and looked away.
“Jamesy cut himself off from people so,” Howard added, and stared at the fire.
“Someone will show up,” said Crossan. “Where there’s a will, there’s a relative.”
No one spoke for several seconds. Minogue had a momentary mental snapshot of these four people, all preoccupied with their own thoughts, sitting here in a comfortable room with the night thick about the house. He recalled the slugs on the steps, the dripping undergrowth alive with creatures making their move as the rain had allowed them.
“God, how things turn out,” said Howard at last.
“This Spillner fella is well-to-do,” Crossan growled. “There was a big, black Merc, with an embassy plate on it, waiting outside the station and we going in there this afternoon. We fell to wondering if the same man is now back in Germany.”
“And is he?” Sheila Howard asked.
“We don’t know for sure if he’s gone or not,” Minogue answered.
“Well, I believe I can find out,” said Howard.
Sheila Howard bobbed back in the sofa as her husband stood. Howard headed for the hallway and closed the door behind himself.
“Is Dan thinking of footing the bill for Jamesy’s funeral?” Crossan asked her.
“Until someone comes up with a better plan,” she replied.
Minogue let his eyes travel about the room. The colours muted by the light kept the room looking warm. Peach now, Minogue saw, perhaps ochre in daylight, and a definite orange, but none of these colours deadening. Waylaid by his own tiredness and lulled by the whiskey and the warmth of the fire, Minogue was slow to pick up on Crossan’s stare at Sheila Howard.
The barrister spoke in a tone of strained politeness.
“And how are your horses?”
“They’re all well, thank you,” she replied. “They were asking for you.” Minogue almost laughed.
“They have grand names, as I recall,” Crossan continued, still serious.
“Another drink?” she asked. “Oh, but that ice is a shambles already. I’ll be back in a minute.”
As she closed the door, Minogue heard Dan Howard saying thanks very much, Sean, say no more. He watched Crossan’s eyes lose their intensity, slip out of focus and turn flat as he stared at the fire.
“Why are you taking digs at her?”
“It’s a ritual,” Crossan replied dully. He didn’t look up from the fire. “Don’t fret over it.”
“Work out your digs some other time then. We don’t want to be raising dust when we need to get something from the Howards.”
Crossan gave a mirthless snort. “You think it’s sour grapes with me, Guard? I like horses, don’t get me wrong. I’m a horse-protestant, am I not? It’s in my blood.”
“Beggars ride to hell. We need their goodwill here, so back off with the smart-aleck stuff.”
Dan Howard returned to the sofa, frowning. Minogue felt suddenly irritated when the thought came to him: Had Crossan a sizeable chip on his shoulder? Was he here less to discover what had happened to Jamesy Bourke or Jane Clark than to embarrass the Howards? Self-absorbed and intent on his own battles, was Crossan’s judgement warped by some humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the Howards or their like? “Horse-protestant”: witty in context here, derisory everywhere else.
“You were right,” said Howard. “That man was put on a plane today.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of it. I suppose that bail conditions allowed him to leave for Germany.”
Minogue decided it was time to change trains or, at the very least, to get on board. He sat forward in his chair.
“I think I should tell you, Mr Howard-”
“Dan.”
“-Dan, that I’m not here tonight to discuss that case exactly. To be candid now, I have no jurisdiction at all in the matter. I am interested in an event which happened a long time ago. In relation to Jamesy Bourke and Jane Clark.”
“Oh, I believe that I knew what you were here for now,” said Howard. “A man of my calling has to be aware of things that are being associated with his name.” He smiled wanly at Minogue and looked over at Crossan. “You know what I’m saying, like…?”
The Inspector nodded. Dan Howard could pick up the phone day or night and check up on him. He might have already done just that.
“Some peculiar things happened in that case. Or, should I say, didn’t happen.”
Howard blinked and sat back. Crossan’s eyes stayed fixed on the fire as Minogue resumed.
“Now, it’s not that the case is reopened, no. As a matter of fact, I’m on me holidays.” Howard’s expression changed into a look of puzzled humour. “I thought I’d just look into it. Satisfy myself that the case was merely, how can I put it, a little more full of… Well, I’d better be careful with a brace of lawyers in the same room. Let’s call them episodic incongruities which mark the proceedings of law. I want to be sure that justice has been rendered.”
Howard smiled broadly as he leaned over to whisper to Crossan.
“Where did you find him, Alo?”
“Fell out of a bloody dictionary, by the sounds of that,” came the barrister’s droning reply.
Howard turned to Minogue again.
“I can tell you’ve had a lot of truck with the legal profession. Go ahead, now.”
Sheila Howard returned with more ice. She left a scent in her wake as she passed the Inspector. Flowery with cloves in it somewhere, he thought. As though all other sounds in the room were silenced and all other movements were stilled, Minogue heard the movement of her jeans rubbing while she walked. A gust rattled the window-frame. Unsettled, Minogue tried to keep easing out his thoughts as though they were a net issuing over the thwarts of a boat. Her face turned to the window brought to Minogue a confused memory of portraits in the National Gallery. He realised with near alarm that he couldn’t seem to stop himself staring at her. As though aware of this, she hesitated before sitting down. Dan Howard was waiting for him to resume. Crossan was lost in the glowing fire, his fingers driven into his resting chin. Minogue sought out Howard’s eyes to bring himself back. “Now I don’t want to be asking you things that’d, you know,” Minogue began, “bring up old, em…”
“Resentments,” said Crossan unexpectedly.
“You mean about Jane Clark,” Howard said. “Oh, you needn’t be worrying there. We testified at the trial, Sheila and I. A lot of things came out.”
Minogue dared a glance at Sheila Howard.
“If you don’t mind, then…”
Her forehead lifted and she nodded at him.
“Well, let me go directly to the matter. Forensic evidence. I was much taken aback to discover, for example, that there were no statements from the County Coroner in the book of evidence used in the trial. As to how Jane Clark met her death exactly, I mean. If she was asphyxiated from smoke inhalation, for example, or died as a result of burns, or from injuries resulting from the collapse of the roof during the fire. Her remains were recovered from the bedroom. That suggests she was asleep and was overcome by smoke or fumes before being able to make the effort to escape the fire.”
Minogue paused and glanced from face to face.
“But in the heel of the reel, I suppose, there have been cases where people who are sober have gone to bed and a fire starts, and they are indeed overcome by the smoke quite rapidly. Such that they, em, perish in the fire. Now what I’m coming to is this: In what condition was Jane Clark when you left the cottage that evening?”
Howard looked to his wife and then to his hands before looking back to Minogue.
“Do you know,” he began in a quiet voice, “it’s a bad thing to talk about someone who’s dead and them not able to speak for themselves. Bred into us never to speak ill of the dead, no matter who, isn’t it? That night…well, hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of it or some part of it.” He released a long breath which whistled through his nose.
“Jane Clark had a lot of drink that night,” he went on, his voice firmer. “I did too. So did Jamesy.” He began rubbing his knuckles and changing hands in the slow, measured rhythm Minogue associated with men who worked outdoors.
“She could hold a lot of drink as long as it was whiskey, of all things. She kept whiskey in the house and I know that she took a drop of it even when she was on her own.”
“How did you know, now?”
“Well, there were times I’d go by and she’d be working on something. She did a bit of pottery-she had a wheel but no kiln. She was keen on setting up a darkroom. She had a plan to do a big coffee-table book on the ancient sites around Clare. It was the Burren she came to see. She’d often have a glass by her. Not a lot, now.”
“Would you describe her as a heavy drinker?”
“I don’t know,” Howard replied. “It didn’t stop her doing her work. She had worked a lot on her own back in Canada, doing graphic art and designing and the like. She had decided to go around the world but ended up here. Days on end she was up on the Burren. High up on the rocks, now, where there’s nothing but the birds, I suppose.”
Howard looked down at his empty glass.
“I thought they were all like that over in the States or Canada. The way you’d see them on telly, like-martinis and cocktails and that for their dinner. She was much the same person with a few drinks on as without, that I remember. She had the same…manner about her, I suppose you’d say.”
“Meaning she had the same appetites,” said Crossan, his eyes still on the embers.
Anger flared on Howard’s face, and it surprised Minogue.
“Alo, there are some things-” Howard began in a sharp tone, but he let the rest of his words go.
“That night,” Minogue persisted, “that night, she was not, can I say, terrible drunk?”
“I’d have to tell you that I had a lot of drink taken and I don’t like drinking on my own so…”
“So you poured a few for her.”
Howard nodded.
“And did she keep up with you?”
“She did.”
“Were you drunk and you leaving her house that night?”
“I was half-cut, as they say.”
“Can you hold your drink, then?”
“I can, I suppose,” said Howard, as though resigned to losing an argument. “I had plenty of practice. But look now.”
He paused and laid his hand over one of his wife’s beside him on the sofa.
“I don’t want you leaving here thinking she was a tramp or that. And there are things that I’d prefer we talked about on our own, you as a Guard, I mean, and myself.”
“Excuse me now if I’m bringing back…”
“Well, it’s never over,” Sheila Howard said. “Really, like.”
Minogue could not decide if her tone leaned more toward exasperation or pity.
“I was there at the trial, yes, and I heard everything. So don’t hold back on my account. Would you like tea?”
“Yes, please,” said Minogue. Crossan sat up as she left and sat forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed at his eyes. Minogue had read Sheila Howard’s restless coming-and-goings for ice and tea as signs of her nervousness about their conversation. Maybe it was Crossan who was annoying her the most with his digs.
“How did you get out to her cottage that evening?” he asked her husband.
“I walked out. Sure it was only a mile or so out the road. A Clare mile, to be sure, but it was no great bother. A fine evening. I thought that she’d come in to the village with me after, for a few scoops and for the music. There were sessions with local box-players and a bit of set-dancing. She liked that.”
“Had you no car?”
“Yes, I did. But I had loaned it to Sheila. She was gone to Galway city for the day.”
So Sheila Hanratty had known him well enough to get a loan of his car, Minogue thought.
“You and Jamesy left her place, so…”
“Yes. Jamesy came in without so much as a knock. Barges in the door with a great welcome for himself and there we were. He had a bottle under his arm. Only it was full, he would have broken it over my head, I don’t doubt.”
“Ye proceeded to have a row,” Minogue led on.
“We did just that, yes.”
The Inspector heard in Howard’s tone embarrassment and impatience now.
“Not a pretty sight, as you can imagine. I’m trying to get me various articles of clothing on and Jamesy is working himself up to-”
“A volcanic fit of anger,” said Crossan with a sober expression.
Howard glanced over at the barrister and nodded as if to register the lawyer’s immaculate work of disguising the sarcasm.
“To add to my, em…”
“Predicament,” said Crossan.
“Predicament. Thanks, Alo. Jane seemed to find something funny about the whole thing. After she got over the initial fright, of course-”
“She was frightened of Jamesy Bourke?” Minogue interjected.
“No. Just the surprise factor, you might say. She turfed us out. While I was busy avoiding Jamesy’s digs and kicks, she took my stuff and threw it out the door. Quite the spectacle. Anyway. I managed to get out of the house and Jamesy stayed awhile giving out to her. There was plenty of shouting and roaring between them.”
“What did he say to her?” Minogue asked.
“He called her names for the most part. And he called me names too, of course. Bad language basically.”
Minogue looked to Crossan’s face. The mask was beginning to slip. An eyebrow fought to control the smile Minogue was sure had been building for several minutes now.
“Threats?” Minogue asked in a low voice, still watching Crossan.
“No. Name-calling. No threats or the like that I heard.”
“He called her names,” Minogue repeated.
Howard nodded.
“Would you care to enumerate any of the things he said about her? Or you, for that matter?”
“I wouldn’t really,” said Howard in a strained voice. “There was nothing you or I haven’t heard before. To the effect that she was a whore and suchlike.”
“No threats,” Minogue repeated. “Didn’t say anything about future meetings or looking forward or revenge? That class of thing?”
“No. He came out after me then and she locked the door. I heard her turn the latch and slide a bolt… Jamesy had boots on. I can recall being mainly worried that he’d connect with his boots. I got a few pucks and I gave him a few. But by then I had me stuff on and I was able to go.”
“What did he do then?”
“He tried to get back in the house. But of course he couldn’t. More shouting and roaring.”
“Could you hear what he was saying this time? How far away were you?”
“Well, I had hightailed it out to the road. I was caught between two stools really. I didn’t want him getting into the house for fear he’d hurt her. Then again, I didn’t want to be so close that he’d get a hold of me. I hung around near the gate.”
“You heard him shouting.”
“I did. He gave up pretty quick and out he came onto the road. He opened the bottle and took a big wallop of whiskey. He saw me and started up again but he didn’t run the greatest. I headed back to the village, trying to talk him down a bit. I was glad to get him out and away from the house. I offered him a few drinks but he wouldn’t at first. But between the exertions and what have you, maybe we sobered up a little because when we got to the village he said all right.”
“How did you calm him down?” Minogue probed.
Howard rubbed his ear and studied the mantelpiece.
“Well, for one thing, I didn’t try to make an iijit out of him. I told him that she was different from us, I remember that.”
“How do you mean?”
“That she didn’t have the same upbringing. That she would do what she liked, sort of.”
“Sexually?”
“Yes. She had told me that she had had plenty of, you know…”
“Lovers,” said Crossan.
“That he shouldn’t feel bad about it, that it was nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal,” Minogue echoed.
Howard nodded. “What I meant was that I didn’t take it personally, like, and that he shouldn’t. People were entitled to live their lives the way they thought was proper, and just because we were from the back of beyond in County Clare…”
Minogue said nothing. Crossan’s hand strayed to his Adam’s apple. Minogue heard his fingertips seeking out bristles.
“Basically I was trying to make him see that he shouldn’t take it so much to heart. That we should be friends despite it. Despite her, I mean.”
Crossan’s baleful gaze remained fixed on Dan Howard. Noting Crossan’s stillness, Minogue felt something brush around his thoughts. Was this Crossan’s idea of fun? He took up the thread again.
“So ye went drinking then. Did he continue to talk about her?”
“Awhile, yes. He was mighty annoyed at her and he was still sour on me, even after a few rounds of drink. But I couldn’t get mad at him, even when he was trying to give me a box in the teeth.”
“How do you mean?”
“Not to be shooting meself in the foot here,” Howard whispered, and looked up from the fire at Minogue with a sad and faintly amused look. “And me a self-respecting, tax-paying TD-”
“Spare us the speech, can’t you,” Crossan broke in. “If it’s a revelation you’re about to land on us, you won’t lose votes from the present company over it.”
“Nor gain them either, I suppose, Alo,” Howard added. He gave a quick smile before continuing.
“Well, it wasn’t hard to feel sorry for Jamesy. He had all his eggs in the one basket, you could say. Jamesy was convinced that she was his and that the pair of them could set up shop, her with her pottery and her photography gallery and him with his plays and poems. And that they’d travel the world.”
“Did he tell you that himself?” Minogue feinted.
“He didn’t.” Minogue heard Howard breathe out slowly. “She did.”
“I remember wondering if and when she’d run out of patience with him-or all of us, for that matter-and she’d let him have it. Lower the boom on him, maybe pack her bags and bale out.”
“Do you mean she led him on?”
Howard took a deep breath and held it in with his shoulders. Then he let it out and sagged back into the sofa.
“Maybe she did. It’s not for me to say. Jamesy wanted everything, you see. For all his wild ways, the same Jamesy was far from, what can I say, frivolous about her. Jane wanted to flit around and to dabble and to experiment. She had a lot of experience of men. She did things and said things that surprised me. I mean, at the time, I thought I knew a lot, but I had never met a woman who was so…”
“Assertive,” said Crossan.
“Come on now, Alo,” Howard snorted and sat up again. “You can do better than that. You knew her too. She wasn’t a man-eater, no. That wouldn’t be fair to say that of her, now.”
“I think,” Crossan said momentously, “that perhaps she was so exciting because she gave the impression that she could do what she liked. She wasn’t stuck to the land. She was a free spirit.”
Howard smiled with a tired look and he held two fingers to his forehead in mock salute. “There you have it,” he said. “Bachelor wisdom that can’t be beat.”
“But you had plenty of eggs,” Minogue said. “Or do I mean baskets?”
“Baskets,” said Crossan.
“Whereas Jamesy Bourke had but the one. Or thought he had.”
Howard nodded, serious again. “At the time, yes,” he murmured.
Minogue struggled to keep up a momentum whose direction he couldn’t determine.
“What did ye talk about in the pub, though?”
“Well, a lot of it was about Jane Clark,” Howard said wearily. “There were other lads there too, and I was hoping we could get Jamesy off the subject of you-know-what or you-know-who. There was crack and music and plenty of drink. I remember him talking to me about some poetry and a plan he had to go to the States for a while so he could make money to live on.”
More details came to Howard, but none of them sparked Minogue to intervene. While Howard talked and Crossan stared into the fire, Minogue’s eyes strayed to the windows. From his earliest days in school, the Inspector had realised that he was a better listener when he wasn’t intent on the talk. As though, by looking to the side, one could see a star better, Minogue had come to depend on this faculty of understanding without the effort of listening closely, this keen reverie. The window facing away from the town was a panel of violet where the absolute country night pressed on the glass.
Howard’s voice stopped and then resumed. Minogue listened, heard and waited, but he allowed his inner eye to leave through the window. He imagined the ghostly heights of the Burren. The names on the huddles of houses and villages came to him: Carron and Gortleca, Kilshanny and Rinnamona. Reciting their names within gave him an odd pleasure. He tried to list more villages from memory but the names drifted away. Ruins of fort, village and church: Corcomroe Abbey, he remembered, Holy Mary of the Fertile Rock. Those scarred terraces crowning the landscape above Ailwee Cave which had caused Kathleen to stare at them that day they had the puncture on the way to the farm. Howard continued.
Sheila Howard was backing in the door with a tray of tea things and a plate of biscuits. Howard sat forward in the sofa and began rubbing his hands together. He stopped after several moments and looked at his hands with a frown as if they were new to him. Crossan coughed and crossed his legs.
“This may sound corny,” said Howard. “But I will always regret to my dying day that I pushed drink at Jamesy that night. I thought it would…”
“Incapacitate him?” Minogue prodded. “Settle him down?”
Howard’s voice fell lower to a monotone.
“I suppose.”
He watched his wife sit down beside him as though it were for the first time.
Minogue said thanks to Sheila Howard. He was keenly aware of her in the room, near to him. Was she still annoyed? He was relieved that he had gained some control over himself. Still, he felt the restlessness return as a sag somewhere in his chest, the heat at his collar. At least he wasn’t sitting here glowing like a beetroot, flustered and dripping from the jowls, he thought with sour gratitude. She shoved the plate across the table toward him and he saw that her hands were big. There was no daintiness about her nails. Some surprise twisted at his mind: she wasn’t a bird in a gilded cage.
“We talked about anything and everything,” Howard was saying. Minogue watched him pour tea for his wife. “The way two lads who are drunk can talk.”
“Huh,” said Crossan.
“What kind of order was he in by the time you left the pub?” asked Minogue.
“Drunk.”
“Was he on his feet at least?”
“Barely,” said Howard. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying much attention at that stage myself.”
“Tell me,” said the Inspector in a tone he hoped didn’t sound too urgent, “did Bourke leave the pub very annoyed at her yet?”
Howard shrugged and then sat very still. A frown came to his face.
“I couldn’t honestly tell you now. I seem to remember him saying things at some point during the night, but I can’t tell you when, I just know it was in the pub, that that was how they are over there.”
“‘They’ meaning Canadians, is it?” Minogue asked.
“Canadians, Americans, I suppose,” Howard murmured.
Minogue stirred his tea without allowing the spoon to touch the inside of the cup.
“Did he tell you that he might try to make up with Jane Clark that night?”
Crossan had moved in to the table. Howard reflexively pushed a cup and saucer toward him.
“I’m trying to remember, now,” said Howard.
“He did,” said Sheila Howard.
Minogue hid his surprise.
“I forgot, Mrs Howard,” he said. “You met up with them late in the evening.”
“That’s right. I came in late from Galway. And I stopped in at the Hotel to listen to a bit of music and see the girls before heading home.”
“Yes,” said her husband, “there was a mighty session on that night. Tourists all over the place. The weather was good, strange to say.”
“The place was packed, all right,” Sheila Howard added.
“Strange how you remember things when you get reminders, even a word or two,” said Howard. He shook his head slowly before sipping at his tea. Minogue noticed Crossan poised with his own cup. He was struck by Crossan’s alertness as the lawyer eyed Dan Howard.
“That’s it,” Howard said then. “St. John’s Eve, do you know it?”
“The midsummer’s night,” replied Minogue. “Yes.”
Howard sipped more tea and looked into the fire.
“The bonfires and everything,” he murmured. “They don’t do it so much nowadays.”
Minogue turned to Sheila Howard.
“May I ask you something, Mrs Howard?”
His voice sounded small in the room. The Inspector swallowed and glanced at her eyes.
“You may indeed,” she replied.
Minogue was struck again by her poise and stillness. Mona Lisa- Mona Sheila… Minogue’s gargoyle flung an image at his brittle composure: Sheela-na-gig. An image of those pagan carvings and statues of women came to Minogue. These statues of women and goddesses, with their knees up and their fingers tugging the lips of their vulvas apart, were widely regarded as grotesque and had been quarantined in the back rooms of the National Museum in Dublin.
“Were you aware…” He struggled through the question and swallowed again. “Were you aware that night of what had gone on out at Jane Clark’s house?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I became aware of it.”
The formality struck Minogue: ‘became aware.’ A rebuke to him for a phrase which did not belong in this chat, in her home? A phrase used in law, in court. He looked over to Crossan and again doubt came to him.
“The girls had heard about it,” she went on. “And you know what that would mean in town. It was no doubt the way Jamesy was acting that got them wondering. Word travels fast, especially inside a pub.”
He looked over at Howard.
“Well, I don’t doubt that I let something slip,” Howard said. “With everyone coming and going in the pub and all the chatting and what have you. And sure once one knew, they’d all know in a matter of minutes. There was a funny side to it, I’d have to admit. Before what happened later, I mean.”
“You were part of a crowd?” Minogue asked Sheila Howard.
She nodded. “The way girls hang around together. Our mothers told us to hunt in packs.”
Kathleen had issued the very same admonitions to Iseult. Did every Irish parent have the same script? He gathered his thoughts to frame the next question.
“Do you recall if Bourke himself was teased about what had happened back at the cottage, if he had his sensitivities tested on the matter by people in the pub that night?”
It was Dan Howard who answered.
“Well, people tend to slag a lot. It’s a pastime of sorts, and that’s common knowledge.” He rubbed at his chin and looked at a landscape print on the wall as though he believed it held the words and knowledge he needed.
“I didn’t slag him at all and I’ll tell you why: I didn’t want a puck from him. Even while he was drunk, he could still rear up on you and throw shapes. We were out in the street around half twelve or so.”
“Your people owned the pub, didn’t they?” Minogue interrupted. Howard frowned.
“Yes, yes. My father did. I mean, he still does, yes… Oh, I see what you mean. We didn’t live over the pub at all, oh no. Our house was out the Ennis Road. We had a man living over the pub. We hung around on the street awhile, a few of us. It was a warm night.”
“Jamesy went his own way,” Sheila Howard said.
“You were there?” asked Minogue.
“Yes, I hung around. I wasn’t tired really. But I went off home myself a little later.”
“After she drove me home,” Howard added.
Minogue began to draw detail out of the fog. “Ah, the car.”
“I had loaned the Mini to Sheila, remember?” said Howard. “She was gone to Galway for the day.”
Minogue put on his sage and satisfied expression to cloak his rambling thoughts. Were the Howards daring him to put pointed questions-police-like ‘were you aware’s-to them in their own house? He felt Crossan’s eyes on him and he looked over. The lawyer’s eyes were not at full-bore, but his expression was both expectant and mocking as he hooded his eyes slightly to signal Minogue. The Inspector looked away, baffled. Something was going on here that escaped him. He bargained for time by reaching for the teapot. Howard took some turf from a basket, placed it on the fire and sat back with a sigh.
Was this Crossan’s moment of spiteful triumph, having finagled a Garda Inspector into Howard’s home to embarrass the TD and his wife? Doubt clawed at Minogue.
“Yes,” said Howard, “I retired in disarray that night. Sheila poured me into the car and left me at home.”
Minogue decided to brazen his way out of his predicament.
“Did you offer a lift to Bourke?”
“No, I didn’t,” Sheila Howard replied. “I wish to God that I had. I wish that Dan or someone had shoved him into the car.”
“Now,” said Dan Howard. “We’ve been over that a thousand times. Don’t be taking it upon yourself.”
“I know, I know.” She cut him short and looked to Crossan. He returned her level, appraising look.
“I wouldn’t have been safe in the car with Jamesy.” She looked down at the teapot. “I’ll get more tea.”
Crossan sat back and crossed his legs.
“Just between us men,” he murmured. “Jamesy had a tendency to be mauling girls.”
“Rough, in any sense?” Minogue asked. “If they weren’t interested, like?”
“Not to the extent that you seem to be implying,” said Howard.
“Well,” said Crossan from his slouch. “The training in the law stood you in good stead with that one.”
Howard let out a breath.
“I’m sorry. I grew up overnight after that. I don’t mind admitting what I was like before that either. There was privilege and money in my family and I could do as I pleased, really. I didn’t have to look forward to buckling down to the farming like Jamesy would have had to. But I can tell you this.” Howard paused and looked up with a pained expression. “I can’t go around full of remorse about it the rest of my life. Yes, Jamesy saw in her the love of his life and all the rest of it. But I was hail-fellow-well-met, playing the field. It’s not my fault that Jamesy was the way he was, God rest him.”
“Thank you for being so candid,” Minogue said. “Rely upon this being a confidential matter between us.”
Howard nodded and looked to the fresh sods of turf beginning to catch fire.
“If only she had come down to the pub that night,” he murmured, “and got rip-roaring drunk with us, things might have been much different. She wouldn’t open the door to him at that hour of the morning, and, sure, why should she? Sick of the pair of us, I’ve no doubt.”
Minogue asked where a bathroom might be and excused himself. He stopped in the hall and looked into the greenhouse kitchen. Terra-cotta tiles, dried flowers, real wood panels and all the wizard devices. Here was something he had seen only in the colour supplements of the English Sunday papers. He had tried to persuade Kathleen that such kitchens existed only in showrooms and advertisements but here was proof otherwise. He heard a kettle purr stronger and a paper turn- Sheila Howard was there, he realised, and he moved off.
He switched on the light in the toilet. Blue water in a green porcelain toilet startled him. For that moment before he recognised modernity, he imagined some disease in a household member. He remembered that Kilmartin’s new home in Killiney harboured the same gentility. Tired, tired, he thought. No toys underfoot. A damn fine house, the Inspector decided. And the Howards seemed to be polished, accomplished people, with none of that gombeen smugness he had expected. They seemed well-used to one another and even intimate in ways he felt were sincere. He could not imagine them having a screaming row. There was the touch of the resting champion to Dan Howard at home here, the certainty of his return to dynamism and diligence tomorrow. Parliamentarian and businessman, Howard gave Minogue the impression of one who advanced steadily and relentlessly on some goal.
He flushed the toilet and stared at his face in the mirror. Howard’s no mere base charmer, he thought. He had that air of durability, a man you could dependably expect to be there in twenty years, higher in the constellation of public life. Maybe shaking hands with one of those plain-suited, smiling Japanese billionaires, both togged out in hard hats as the sod is turned for a factory to manufacture whats-its in Portaroe or Ennis or Gortaboher.
There was nothing providential about Sheila Hanratty’s success either. She gave Minogue the same sense of diligence and control as did her husband. Tolerating Crossan, knowing that he knew that she and her husband could outlast him, she went her own way. Were they going to remain childless, Minogue wondered with sudden pity? Maybe a shared sadness there had given them their composure and solidarity?
He draped the towel carefully on the rail. There on the wall to his left was a print, a scene of stones and grasses topped by the orb of a golden sun. He squinted at the print close up, but found no place that he recognised exactly. Then he thought of that warm evening twelve years ago, young men and women, not yet out of their careless years. A summer’s night with music spilling out into the night-street from the open doors and windows of the pub. The Portaree Inn, or Howard’s Hotel as Minogue had known it in his youth, had been uninspiring enough, but Tidy Howard had seen his chance and he had plumbed, nailed, illuminated and painted his way into presenting what tourists might imagine a traditional country inn could or should have looked like.
Minogue recalled the stone walls of the Portaree Inn shiny with coats of polyurethane, the light from brass lamps, their lustre factory-aged, glistening on the stone. Locals who had laughed laughed no more. Their sons found work building houses and fixing roads, pouring drink for visitors. Commerce in high gear had pounced on Portaree, and a population which had known only episodic bursts of comfort in the form of work for non-inheriting children leapt at the opportunities. Minogue had himself observed the prospering village on his many forays to his home county over the years. The disingenuity of the “traditional” being hawked in the Portaree Inn-the Inn and the Out of it, Mick still called it-and the ingenuity of Tidy Howard, by now a figure of stature in more ways than one, had impressed Minogue. He had returned to Dublin after those holidays unable or unwilling to join in his brother’s disparagement. Mick had carried on the farm and forced emigration was unknown to him, Minogue reasoned. Why be ashamed of wanting prosperity?
He shook himself out of his wonderings and left the bathroom. In the hall he heard Crossan’s characteristic rapid-fire tones barked out behind the living-room door. He stopped by the closed door and swept his fingers over the top of his fly for the third time, again to make certain that he had zipped it and would not make a complete iijit of himself in front of Sheila Howard. He look about the hallway again. The staircase spindles were clear-lacquered over a cherry-coloured varnish and the mahogany handrail curved as the staircase ascended. The hall door was a generous width, heavy between slim windows to both sides…
Minogue stopped his hand turning the knob and looked more intently toward one of the windows flanking the door. Gone, whatever it had been. A cat or a dog out by the cars? He let go of the door-handle and stepped across to the window. He stared at the pebbled drive where his Fiat was parked, stubby and down-at-heel next to the Audi. Light from above the hall door outside did little more than confirm the shapes of the cars and outline the low hedges nearby. But someone was out there.
His fingertips began to tingle and he held his breath. His mind could not fasten on anything beyond his own quickening heartbeat now. He stepped back from the window but kept his eyes on the narrow strip of glass. Half-formed images tore through his mind: the muzzle of a gun firing, the sense that the world in smithereens had been thrown at impossible speeds into the air, the bomb’s shock waves pounding his eardrums, the windscreen coming in at him like a lace tablecloth. His mouth turned chalky with the memory of his own near-fatal greeting from death. Sourness burned low in his throat and he heard his breath come out in a tight sigh.
He grasped the door handle, turned it sharply and stepped through the doorway. Crossan said all right to Howard who said the day after tomorrow and I was already in touch with Father O’Loughlin and he knew the Bourkes years ago… Eyes turned toward the Inspector and stayed on him. The broad window to his left, that graceful opening to the night outside which had pleased him before, now issued a silent shriek of alarm. Ice gathered in his chest.
“What is it?” someone said, a man’s voice.
Minogue looked: Howard. The window remained in his side vision.
“What’s wrong?” Crossan asked.
Minogue’s thoughts returned. Damn: he had walked by the phone in the hall. Go back?
“I’m not certain now,” he began. He tried to clear his throat. “I’m not sure now, but I think I saw someone outside.”
Howard’s eyes snapped into an intense stare.
“Does there be anyone around here at night?” Minogue asked.
“No,” said Howard.
The Inspector reached over to the strings and began pulling the curtains closed. Howard catapulted up from the sofa and grasped Sheila Howard’s arm. Crossan stood to a crouch.
“We’d do well to stay low,” Minogue whispered, and he sank to his knees. He put his hands out on the floor. He remembered playing horsey with Daithi and Iseult twenty years previously.
“Aren’t we being kind of stu-” Crossan began.
“No!” snapped Minogue. The Howards were now on all fours and Crossan was kneeling.
“The phone-” Minogue started to say when the curtains danced. An instant later, even before he heard the chat-chat-chat of automatic fire, pieces of glass batted and tore at the curtains before cascading onto the floor. More tears appeared in the curtain and it danced quicker, as though being whacked by invisible hands. Minogue felt his cheek against the wood floor. A part of his mind not swept away in panic wondered about ricochets. He opened his eyes and saw the spots being punched across the ceiling. Fragments of cornice and plaster flew in the air and dust swirled under the ceiling light. Then it was dark. Minogue heard a lampshade being flung against the wall. Small, sharp things rained down on him. Wood splintered and he heard the window frame chirrup before it disintegrated. Minogue clenched his eyelids tight then against the maelstrom of dust and minute flying shards and he began to wriggle toward the doorway. Through his knees and elbows he felt the dull percussive thump of bullets as they hit the walls and were stopped by the stone bulk within the plaster.
Several seconds passed before he realised that the shooting had stopped. The remains of the ceiling light kept swinging wildly in the lull. The torn curtains settled slowly against the window-sill. Odd fragments of glass and plaster fell at intervals, making Minogue’s heart leap each time. He steeled himself for the shooting to resume, for footsteps coming up the steps or running through the kitchen. He rubbed knuckles in his eye sockets and opened his eyes cautiously. Light from the hall sliced into the clouds of dust. He looked up at the wire of the ceiling light still swinging, the frayed curtains. Suddenly his body tensed: he heard running steps on the gravel outside.
They were going away from the house. As the sound of the footsteps receded, he began to hear gasps nearby. The fire glowed in the grate still, its yellow glow widened but dulled by the slowly falling dust. The room was now eerily calm.
“Are ye there?” Minogue whispered. An engine coughed down on the road and he listened intently, hoping that he could at least tell if it was a six- or a four-cylinder or something.
“I think so,” Howard answered.
“Yes,” said Sheila Howard.
The engine didn’t catch on the first turn of the key. When it did, the driver let out the clutch immediately and the tires bit in, leaving a rasping hiss as they scrambled for traction on the wet road.
“Is there anyone hurt?” Minogue hissed. No one answered.
“Alo!” Howard called out.
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Crossan replied before coughing. He elbowed up from the floor. “This isn’t my house at all,” he spluttered and coughed again.
“We’ll get out of here right away,” Minogue said. “They may have left something behind them that could do damage.”
Like figures in a dream, the Howards, with Crossan following, scurried like monkeys to the door.
“Stay well down still,” Minogue warned. He reached up from his crouch and switched off the hall light, then hurried the shambling, hopping figures toward the kitchen and the rear of the house.