Russell showed up an hour after the first Gardai from Ennis, and a half-hour after two carloads of Guards from the Emergency Response Units. A half-dozen squad cars, an ambulance and several vans now clogged the road by the gates. Minogue watched the Superintendent slide out of his seat and listen while a Sergeant briefed him. Minogue was sitting in the passenger seat of a squad car, the Howards in the back. Crossan, the last to be interviewed, was in a nearby squad car. Minogue had noticed that the ERU Guards didn’t mix much with the uniformed Guards. The former had at least covered their guns after inspecting the house. Minogue looked down at the Elastoplast on the back of his hand. The air in the car was too hot now and he turned down the blower.
He spoke over his shoulder to the Howards.
“Are ye warm enough in the back?”
Sheila Howard was leaning into her husband and he had his arm around her shoulders. Dan Howard touched his forehead where a small, fine piece of glass had been expertly removed by an ambulance attendant.
“We are,” said Howard in a whisper.
The interior light of the Toyota accentuated Howard’s pallor. His curls were greyed lighter in parts by dust from the pulverised plaster. Minogue turned around. His elbows rubbed at the cloth of his jacket and reminded him that he had rubbed raw spots there from his movement across the floor during the fusillade. Sheila Howard’s eyes were small and fixed on the headrest in front of her.
“Are they here yet?” Howard asked.
The bomb squad, he means, Minogue realised. He edged closer to the windscreen to be rid of the glare from inside the car and squinted at the house. His Fiat and the Audi seemed like sleeping, animate threats. He still couldn’t believe that his own geriatric, baby-blue Fiat-a mobile part of his and Kathleen’s home, full of receipts five years old, tinfoil from chocolate bars (Kathleen still liked Whole Nut, he recalled lazily), hairpins, screws and nuts, faded maps and ancient paper handkerchiefs used and unused-all this, and now his car might harbour sudden death. He shivered in spite of the heat.
“I don’t think so,” he said to Howard.
The driver’s door opened and Russell, strangely chaste in civvies, got in.
“Evening, Dan, missus,” said the Superintendent before he slammed the door against the damp air. “Don’t be worrying now. I’m not about to drive off.”
The Howards didn’t seem to notice the humour.
“And the man himself,” said Russell, nodding to Minogue. “Alo Crossan’s the fourth one?”
“Yes,” said Minogue.
“Let’s see Alo stand up in court and defend these gangsters now, after we catch them,” Russell said. “See if tonight’s work has given Alo a bit of insight into his clientele.” He turned away from Minogue as best he could under the wheel and addressed the Howards.
“Sure ye wouldn’t like to stop in at the ’ospital, just in case?”
Howard shook his head. Minogue watched Russell’s eyes make a study of the Howards for competence, shock.
“We’re going to wait for a bit of daylight to have a look at the cars,” Russell went on. “We can get new sensors down from Dublin that might save us putting a few dents in the vehicles. Have ye a place to go tonight?”
“Well,” Howard mumbled, and glanced at his wife.
“We’ll have Guards with ye night and day, that goes without saying,” said Russell.
“All right,” said Howard. “I mean, thanks.”
“We found casings-spent ammunition, that is to say-out in the driveway,” Russell said mildly. “It looks as if someone fired a submachine gun.”
Again Russell looked the Howards over as if to assess their suitability for a task. Howard merely nodded.
“Have ye had any, ah, inkling, that this might happen?”
“No,” answered Howard. “I didn’t think I’d be considered a…” He looked down at his wife. Target, Minogue finished the sentence within.
“Can I have a word with you outside a minute?” he asked Russell.
Russell seemed to consider granting a favour, then stepped out before the Inspector. He met Minogue at the front of the Toyota and took a peppermint from his pocket. He dropped it onto his tongue, eyeing Minogue all the while.
“They’re a bit out of it,” said Minogue.
“And you’re not?”
“Less so, I’m thinking. I tend to get the jitters later on.”
“You’ve been under fire before, so,” said Russell with heartless levity. “Dublin’s full of excitement, they say.”
Minogue put on a tight, insincere smile.
“Dull enough, compared to here.”
Russell manoeuvred the peppermint to his back teeth and bit it decisively.
“What were you up to with the Howards tonight? Aside from ducking bullets, like.”
“Exchanging pleasantries and noting interior decorating tips to relay them to my wife.”
“Huh. You and Alo Crossan. The Liberator.”
Minogue reflected for a moment on Russell’s cynical nickname for the lawyer. The Liberator, Daniel O’Connell, champion of Catholic Emancipation a hundred and fifty years ago, had seen his monster rallies eclipsed by the tactics of gelignite and guns. The Superintendent’s small eyes bored into him while the jaws worked at crushing the last pieces of lozenge.
“Crossan has given himself the mission in life of setting defendants free on the streets, gangsters that should be kept under lock and key. Ad infinitum,” Russell said, grinding his teeth in final farewell to the peppermint.
“That’s Latin,” he added. He kept his blank stare locked onto Minogue’s eyes.
“Who?” said Minogue, adverting to grammar. Russell ignored or misread Minogue’s pedantry. He thumbed another lozenge into his mouth.
“Maybe even the likes of the boyos that did the work tonight,” Russell said. “Wouldn’t that look good on his gravestone: ‘Shot by his clients’?” Minogue looked away from the Superintendent to the arrival of a Hiace van.
“I think that Mr Crossan plans to be around and working for quite a while,” he murmured.
“Lie down with a dog…”
Russell let the proverb find its own way home in Minogue’s mind.
“Have you people in mind for this shooting?” Minogue asked.
“Course we have. We’ll be knocking on doors all over the county tonight. Will that put a dent in your holidays?”
Minogue considered the Howards’ plight again. Howard did double-duty as a prosperous member of the new Ireland, a man of land and commerce as well as a parliamentary figure. He was an ideal target. Would the Howards ever feel safe in their house again?
“It’ll put dents in a lot of holidays.”
“You may well be right,” Russell allowed. His crinkly hair, backlit by the headlights, glistened with a covering of fine rain.
“There could be jobs and factories lost on the head of this. Speaking of heads, now. Preliminary investigations”-he paused to sniff the air and survey the scene before him-“preliminary investigations tend to suggest that the job done there tonight on this fine house was fairly, can I say, ‘fine-tuned.’ The shooters went high. ”They needn’t have ducked, Sergeant Hanrahan inside tells me.”
Minogue resisted the inclination to retaliate. He watched Russell lob another peppermint into his mouth.
“Rank amateurs tend to down high-flying birds when they pull triggers,” the Inspector said.
“Are you suggesting that this was attempted murder, so?”
“You decide that. After all, I’m on me holidays.”
“You’re hardly the kind of tourist that these gangsters had in mind of frightening now, I’d say,” said Russell. “And by the way: you can have the tourism thing and still keep people on the land, to my way of thinking. People’s livelihoods depend on the tourists, even tourists down from Dublin.”
“You don’t say, now. I was born and reared on a small farm. I’ve a brother who wouldn’t be in the farming today if he hadn’t been able to pick up a few fields over the years. There are families who can’t bid down a man from Hamburg or Rotterdam.”
“Not Dan Howard,” said Russell, moving his lozenge around. “You’re gone out of farming longer than you were ever in it. Parnell is history, O’Connell is history and de Valera’s history-”
“‘With O’Leary in the grave,’” Minogue interrupted.
“Who’s O’Leary?”
“I can tell you that his politics didn’t tend to the shopkeeper’s side of the ballot.”
“Look,” said Russell as if he were concluding a deal that could shortly go sour. “Howard’s popular. He had a good majority the last election. His father put Portaree and West Clare on the map. Anyway. You got nothing clear on the fella in the garden or whatever, did you?”
Minogue shook his head. The image of the flitting, shadowy figure upended his musing. “A shadow, really. I didn’t even know if there was a mask.”
“One car?”
“Yes. I’m fairly sure there was a driver waiting. One door slammed after the shooting. The car took off sharpish.”
Russell crunched the lozenge and nodded toward the house.
“Looks like the job done on that holiday cottage. Might have hurt someone…by accident.” Minogue tended to agree so he said nothing. The other possibility, quickly dismissed, was that a novice had pulled the trigger, not compensating for the upward jog of the barrel as the gun fired.
“Well, whether or which,” said Russell. “We’ll look into a few nests to see if some birds were home tonight. Each and every one of them. Cuckoos included.” Minogue believed Russell meant Eoin Minogue.
“How’s your German coming along?”
He was pleased to have his effect displayed immediately.
“How do you mean?”
“Someone is going to need fluent German for-”
“I get it, I get it,” Russell snapped. “Don’t you be fretting over that matter.”
The Superintendent made to head over toward a huddle of plainclothes Gardai gathering around a van, but he stopped suddenly and glared at Minogue.
“Here,” said Russell, “a word in your ear. I know more about you than you may think. Kilmartin wouldn’t have you on board if you weren’t good either. But you’re too long out of County Clare to be up to the likes of Alo Crossan. I hope for your sake that you don’t find yourself up the Suwahnee River with shite all over you, and then trying to tell me that Crossan told you this and Crossan told you that. ’Cause Crossan may take you out for a long walk and that could easy bring you down the far side of the street from me. Alo Crossan could buy and sell the best brains in the country for shrewdness. If he makes an iijit of you, that makes an iijit of me and my men here-being as we’re on the same side.”
The Superintendent nodded once, suggesting to the Inspector that he was taking his own advice very seriously. Then he pointed a finger at Minogue.
“Play by the rules here, Minogue.” Minogue watched him walk away and then sat in the car.
“I think it might be a wise move to sort out alternative sleeping quarters for the next little while,” he said.
Sheila Howard nodded.
“If we can get a lift we’ll go into town and stay at the Old Ground,” said Howard.
“You’ll have a lift, all right. You’ll have two armed detectives with ye,” Minogue murmured. “Better get used to them. You’ll have them awhile.”
The Inspector stepped out of the car again and went looking for a Guard to drive them into Ennis. The Guard, a prematurely bald smoker who rubbed at his nose a lot, was surly and tense. He grunted at Crossan as the barrister sat into the Nissan. The drizzle haloed lights over the town as the two cars negotiated the roundabout coming into Ennis proper.
“Sun tomorrow but colder, I hear,” said Minogue.
“Unk,” said the detective. Minogue gave up. He realised that this Guard was probably anticipating a sleepless night by the Howards’ door tonight. Hoey or not, car or no car, delayed shock awaiting or not, Minogue decided that he was going to stop at a pub, walk back to the B amp; B and get a bath out of Mrs McNamara’s plumbing. He would not tell Hoey about this until the morning.
“Let me off at a good pub, can’t you,” he said to the detective.
“Good move,” said Crossan.
“Ennis is full of pubs,” said the detective.
“Well, don’t trouble yourself on my account,” Crossan said sharply. “Let me out at the Old Ground and I’ll fend for myself.”
The car stopped. Minogue watched the Howards getting out of the other squad car. Sheila Howard still looked blank as the detectives shepherded her in the door but her husband seemed to be coming through the dazed state. He waved shyly toward Minogue.
The drizzle seemed to be gone, but Minogue held out his hands to be certain. Beside him the O’Connell monument rose into the night. He walked alongside Crossan to Considine’s pub. Chance cars moved sluggishly in the narrow street, whispering by the two men. “I’ll have the one with you,” Crossan said.
The lawyer pushed the narrow door open. They took two stools at the bar where a half-dozen patrons idled. Considine’s was one of the few pubs left in Ennis which still purveyed all manner of goods, from Wellington boots to tea, fly-paper to rashers, custard-powder to sardines, as well as selling drink. A coal fire glowed in the grate, a colour television glowed on the counter. When Miss Monaghan walked confidently onto the Miss Ireland stage in Dublin, Minogue almost expected her to walk out onto the counter.
An elderly woman with very thick lenses and a face like a kitten emerged from a door to the kitchen.
“Mr Crossan,” she murmured, and gave Minogue a nod. “A little inclement tonight.”
“The prospect of better, ma’am,” replied Crossan.
“That’s the style,” said Mrs Considine. She pushed back her glasses and grinned. Her brown teeth were all her own, Minogue saw, but they were small and feral.
“And how are ye all tonight anyhow?” she said as she sought out whiskey glasses.
Her greeting had that gentle, heartfelt tone which Minogue associated with talk at wakes, or when mentioning someone on whom great misfortune had fallen.
“Not bad,” replied Crossan. “Considering.”
“Paddy, the same as his honour here?” said Mrs Considine to Minogue.
“Jamesons, instead, please.”
Minogue watched Mrs Considine’s arthritic fingers manipulate the glasses and he wondered how Hoey was. He and Hoey had adjoining rooms at Mrs McNamara’s. Would Hoey be prowling about in the night? Would Tynan or Kilmartin have heard about the episode yet? God, he thought, if they put his name in the paper reporting the shooting, Kathleen’d be down dragging him out of Ennis by the neck. What could a man do?
They retired to a bench by the fire. Crossan nodded at the customers and they returned to their contemplative drinking, pretending to carry on with their conversation while watching Miss Monaghan and eavesdropping on what Mr Crossan might have to say to his companion.
“There’ll be no other mischief, I hope,” said Crossan. “With the cars, I mean.”
Mischief, Minogue thought. Flicking a gun to automatic and holding the trigger. He had a fleeting image of the boot-lid of his benighted Fiat popping up with the force of the small charge he expected the bomb squad would employ. Would the insurance pay for it? “Act of God”? “Civil unrest”?
“I’d as soon they find out for sure come the morning,” Minogue murmured. The Jamesons scorched his throat.
“Be the laugh of the year if the Guards find whoever did this and I end up being hired to defend ’em.”
“So thinks Tom Russell too,” said Minogue.
“Tom Russell can shag off,” said Crossan. “He’ll eat humble pie soon enough. I’m not about to be put off now, no matter what. What about yourself?”
“Well. I sort of thought we could sort things out a bit over a breakfast tomorrow morning. You and me. Shea. Maybe it’s a good time to call in on Naughton in Limerick. If I have a car at all, that is.”
Crossan’s eyelids drooped slightly over the eyeballs but this did little to relieve the intensity of his gaze at the television.
“The Howards with their bodyguards. By God, it’s like Sicily or somewhere. Latin America…”
Minogue too looked over at the television.
“Turn it up, Mrs C,” said one of the customers, an old man with his hat resting on the back of his head, his thumbs in his braces where they were buttoned to his trousers. “And we’ll listen to the girls.”
“An occasion of sin, Tom Quinn,” murmured Mrs Considine. “Young ones walking around with hardly a stitch on them. They’ll catch pneumonia, the half of them. Sure there’s not a pick of fat on any of them, the poor things.”
“Yerra, ’tis not fat we want, missus,” said Quinn, unencumbered by the dentures he had made a habit of taking out and placing in his pocket each evening as he entered the pub. “The doctors are always tellin’ us that fat is bad for us and that’s no lie, now.”
Mrs Considine turned up the sound. The audience in Dublin clapped; the camera swung away and up to reveal platforms of flickering lights and starbursts of spotlights. Another camera rushed in on Miss Monaghan’s mother and father who were being emotional in the audience. A ruddy-faced man still in his overcoat placed his empty pint glass on the counter with a crisp tap.
“Is our one up yet?” he demanded softly. “She’s from Corofin, you know. Dwyers. Bofey Dwyers, the funeral director in Corofin. I have money put aside with Bofey for when the time comes. So as I won’t be a burden.”
“God, you were always the careful man, Florrie,” said Mrs Considine. “That’s very thoughtful of you, to be sure.”
Florrie took the compliment in his stride and continued looking solemnly at the television.
“You know not the day nor the hour,” he said. Mrs Considine sighed as she drew a new pint of stout for him.
“You’re right, Florrie, you’re right. But you don’t look that close to the wood to me.”
The camera sprang on a bikini-clad Miss Cork.
“Suffering Jesus that died on the cross,” Quinn marvelled.
The compere asked Miss Cork if she liked farming. She giggled and said she loved the outdoors.
“I’m not so keen on the farming myself,” muttered Florrie.
Two young men entered the pub. One had reddened eyes and a smirk. Minogue, haggard, nodded at them and wondered if everyone looked familiar to him in County Clare. Both men ordered lager, and they took up watching Miss Cork giggling and shifting about on her high heels. Minogue wondered if Iseult had already stormed into RTE to throttle the producers of this sexist tripe. The patrons of Mrs Considine’s select bar warmed to the sparkling personality, poise and deportment of Miss Cork. Minogue noted that her collarbones were very prominent and that, despite her very large breasts, she looked underfed.
Bourke had thus been left very high and very far from dry, on the street after midnight, free to indulge his own bitterness. Abandoned, left to his fate? Minogue tried to imagine it: drunk-swaying, by all accounts-and alone on the street. What was Bourke feeling as he saw the car drive away, the streets empty? Despair? Fury? Dan Howard was being driven home while James Bourke was left kicking his heels there on the side of the street, pockets empty, drunk. Did Bourke feel used, bought off? Howard could always call on money or help or comfort. Bourke had had nowhere to turn. Naughton, Minogue thought, the first Garda reported on the scene. Perhaps he could help Minogue see where he was drifting, help him to a mooring at which he could tie up the impressions and facts he was still unable to link. How drunk was Howard? How drunk was Bourke? Too drunk to walk?
“Which one is she?” asked one of the newly arrived. His fogged eyes suggested to the Inspector that he had visited other pubs tonight.
“Can’t you tell she’s Cork the way she rolls her R’s?” said the sage and observant Florrie.
“Arra, man, that’s only the high heels what does that,” scoffed another.
Miss Donegal followed, arriving to accolades. She began talking effusively of her interest in travel. Minogue turned to Crossan and wondered if he himself looked half as washed out as the barrister did.
“Tell me something,” he said in a low voice to the barrister. “Is there a part of you that likes to see the Howards haunted?”
“Haunted? What are you on about?”
“Bourke. The fire, the trial. Howard’s the big banana here now.”
Crossan kept his gaze on the television.
“What difference would it make to the facts of what we’re about?”
Minogue wasted no time on delicacy.
“So you are.”
“I must say,” Crossan enunciated with care, “that there is a part of me that’s turned off by the pair of them.”
“We shall so agree then.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t envy Dan Howard or Sheila Howard. I just think that Dan Howard inherited his due with Jamesy Bourke. And I did poorly by Jamesy when he was alive. There’s cause and effect at work somewhere in the back of it all, even if I can’t shine a light on it for you. Do you know what I mean?”
Crossan leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, all the while keeping his eyes on the screen.
“Let me hazard a guess now. You think you’re listening to a sour fart elbowing up to forty, with life passing me by, no family or kin, is it? A misplaced sense of responsibility or something? Crank, maybe, huh? No, maybe it’s more like you’re seeing someone who wants to buy off his conscience.”
“You’re giving me a lot of choices, I’d have to say.”
“Let me try a few more on you. Maybe I was starstruck by Sheila Hanratty? Hah. I was never so. But you’re right in one suspicion which you haven’t mentioned. I don’t vote in Dan Howard’s direction.”
“Probably one of your best kept secrets, counsellor. But there’s something you’re holding back.”
“Tell me, so.”
“If I could, I would.”
“About me personally or about the Bourke thing?”
“Why separate them?”
Crossan guffawed loud enough for all eyes to turn from Miss Donegal’s spotted bikini.
“As true as God, Minogue, you’re a ticket. I think you’re trying to see how far you can push me. Is it that you want to see me rear up at you?”
“I’m going along with you still because I will find out what happened to Jane Clark and Jamesy Bourke with or without your help. I want you to know that. I also want you to know that I’m doing it for my own reasons. I want you to know that if you’ve kept stuff back from me I’ll crease you.”
Crossan’s smile lingered, diminished.
“A very genteel way of issuing threats… What’s turned you so sour on me?”
Miss Donegal said that she’d like to say hello to her family in Gortahork, her sister in Glenties who was due to have a baby any day now and all her friends in the Department of Finance in Dublin Castle. Lovely teeth, Minogue observed. The compere, his thinning hair expertly and sharply scalloped, blown and sprayed toward his forehead like an unstable Roman emperor, invited her to go ahead.
“Well?” Crossan prodded.
“Well, indeed,” Minogue grunted. “I’m trained to be suspicious. Don’t take it personally.”
Crossan’s smile had dropped off his face and a look of resentment took its place. Minogue shivered and finished his whiskey. He realised that his body was aching. Images of the shooting, the curtains dancing, came to him and his stomach tightened. Miss Donegal waved. High heels and a winning manner, he thought.
“Nine tomorrow,” he said. “See what we can salvage.”
He wished Miss Donegal a silent goodnight-she was leaving the stage-and he stepped out into the night. Muddle-headed, shivering occasionally, Minogue took deep breaths. He wondered when the real effects of the episode at the Howards tonight would take hold of him and frighten him as it should. Crossan’s face stayed with him. Weariness flowed over him in waves and the images came to him quicker: Sheila Howard’s face, the light from the hallway radiating through the dust from the shattered plaster as it eddied out of the doorway. A moment of panic stopped Minogue as he thought of the bullets streaming in the window, ricocheting, tearing into his body. He knew, now that he was alone, he could not avert his thoughts about it. His knees felt watery and the cold air found his neck. He clasped his collar shut against his neck and his body gave one long shudder. A car passed the mouth of the street. Better get somewhere warm, get into bed, he realised.
The door to Considine’s pub opened and Minogue watched one of the late arrivals look up and down the street. The man paused and raised a hand to his hair. He glanced at Minogue and their eyes met momentarily. Then he crossed to the other footpath and searched both ends of the street. Minogue stepped out, walking briskly and woodenly toward Mrs McNamara’s Bed and Breakfast.
Mrs Mac related that Hoey had gone to bed an hour ago. She had almost finished one sock and was still as keen and bright-eyed knitting as she had been nearly four hours earlier.
“God, you look perished,” she said. “Are you coming down with a cold, is it? I have powder and aspirin inside if you want.”
“Thank you, no. Was Shea looking for me or anything like that?” Minogue asked.
“No, he wasn’t. I thought he wanted to go out awhile, on account he looked a bit restless…” She paused to gather a stitch, smiled and went on. “He had a cup of tea and a read of the paper. He said he wasn’t really up to being himself lately.”
She looked up suddenly.
“Are ye related, by any chance?”
Bewildered, Minogue almost smiled. Had she read something into them, some caretaker or parental thing? Clare people had indeed cornered the market on intuition.
“We watched a bit of Miss Ireland,” Mrs McNamara went on. “He fancied Miss Donegal to win.”
“Same as myself,” Minogue blurted out. Mrs McNamara gave him a knowing smile.
“So you saw a bit of the talent where you were?”
“I left after Miss Donegal. She seemed very nice.”
Mrs McNamara smiled at the sock taking shape. “I recall her ankles being a weak spot.”
Minogue shrugged.
“Ye mightn’t notice, being men, but thick ankles have a habit of making a girl look very flat on her feet. Not to speak, you’ll excuse me saying this now, of a girl having legs like a table. It’s the diet down the country, I maintain. The fat tends to settle.”
Minogue vaguely recalled an adage about Irishwomen having a unique dispensation from God to wear their legs upside down.
“Well. Miss Kerry walked away with it in the end,” Mrs McNamara sighed.
Her tongue moved around her lips as she negotiated a difficult part of the sock. She approached the toe now and Minogue watched her draw out the needle.
“Good for you,” he said. She drew her tongue in and squinted at the television.
“But she had a tan on her that came out of a bottle,” she declared. “How would she come by such a burn honestly in Kerry, I ask you? It’s a cod.”
“I suppose,” Minogue allowed. “I’ll be off now and goodnight.”
“Ye must be very tired. What with all the work ye’re doing?”
Minogue gave her a broad, fake grin.
“Do you know,” she went on. “A woman down the street was telling me-now she does be around the town a lot more than myself-there’s a lot of Guards in the town. Well, so she says, but she’s very quick to pick up on things, don’t you know.”
Minogue said that he did know what Mrs McNamara meant about other people. He paused by the door.
“I wonder if there’s something going on here in town now.”
He rested his hand on the door handle.
“Ennis is always full of life, as I recall,” he said.
Mrs McNamara looked up with a little mischief in her eye. “You know where you are. Down the hall, like.”
The porpoises were smiling as they talked. He knew what they were saying without the need to hear their words. They surrounded him and he wondered if he should swim back to the surface to take a breath. But it was windy and raining there. Far cosier here. How could they talk underwater? Stay here if you like, one of them, he didn’t know which one, told him. Why would you want to go back? It’s better here.
It was neither light nor dark; the water was neither warm nor cold. The water must be clear because he could see anything he wanted. How far can we go before we have to turn back, he wanted to know. Look where we are now, he was told. Without any effort, he was able to stand in the water and look at the cliffs. I wanted to come here, I know, he said, but not like this. I must go home. That’s all right, but you’d be foolish to want that, one told him. You can’t keep me here if I don’t want to stay. In an instant he was in the Shannon. Watch for nets, they said, but he couldn’t see them anymore. Come back to the ocean and…
He was over the water now, clear of it, still, and he knew that wings had grown on his shoulders. Hoey was sitting on the rocks, staring out to sea. His feet were bare and his trousers were rolled up to his knees. I don’t know, said Hoey. What was the question? Eilo McInerny was searching for seashells and periwinkles in the pools between rocks covered in seaweed. Her daughter stood next to her. Naked and unconcerned, she was brushing her hair. See, said Hoey, still staring at the swells of the retreating tide. Although it was Hoey, he knew, it wasn’t Hoey’s face. It was the face of that stranger again, the one with the moustache. In the air now. I’ll fall. No. There was the fire. The stone walls were patterned like a child’s puzzle, a maze. Help little Jane find her way home. He knew the way and he hovered over the blazing cottage. The man was screaming and his body was blackened. How can I see and it dark, he wondered, but he didn’t care.
He looked through the burning thatch and the woman was there. Her body was white, untouched by the inferno. She lay on the floor, her eyes still and calm, looking up at him. It was Sheila Howard. This, she said. He looked away and the people had come. They leaned on the walls and watched the fire. The whole town is here, the whole county, he knew. The crowd was gathered in a perfect circle about the fire. He felt the heat on his wings and he wished for the ocean again. The faces turned up to the sky and he knew them all. Now you know, the porpoises said. I don’t, he said.
He focussed on a corner of the room. The bedroom was full of a milky light, soft shadows. No Kathleen? I’m in Ennis. Fragments of his dream came and left his mind. The unfamiliar smells of the house drew his thoughts away. He realised that he had slept deeply. Was that a radio on somewhere? He was stiff. It was half-past seven.
In the parlour, Hoey looked up from the Clare Champion and did a quick examination of the Inspector’s face.
“How’s Shea?” said Minogue.
“Middling to good.”
“I was about to knock,” said Mrs McNamara from the kitchen. She came through moments later, carrying a tray with steaming scones and tea.
“Are ye sure ye won’t have a proper breakfast, a fry? I have rashers in the fridge.”
“Thanks, no, Mrs McNamara.”
Minogue let the smell of brewing tea soothe him. Mrs McNamara retreated to the kitchen.
“Did you have a good night?” he asked Hoey.
There had been no light under Hoey’s door last night, he recalled. He had dithered over checking on him, but he had fallen into sleep himself while thinking about it.
“I did.”
The Inspector rubbed at his eyes. Hoey did look rested, less cautious. Mrs Mac returned with jam.
“Did ye see outside?” she asked. Fog dense as smoke, still and white, had covered Ennis overnight.
“I did,” said Minogue.
“You can’t see twenty feet in front of your nose now,” she said. “It must have got warm in the night.”
She left with a warning to eat all the bread and scones. Minogue slumped into the chair as the door closed behind her.
“You look a bit shook,” said Hoey. “Did you overdo it a bit last night?”
“Did I what? Wait’ll I tell you what came my way last night.” The memory of the swirling dust, the thumps as the bullets hit the walls made Minogue shudder.
“Miss Kerry?” said Hoey.
Minogue thought of the porpoises, the crowds watching the house on fire. He heard himself begin to tell Hoey about last night. He saw Hoey’s jaw drop and his face take on the lines and arches of incredulity. He wondered how his own words came out with so little effort from his thoughts. It was only when Hoey, agog, jarred his own cup into his saucer and spilled tea that Minogue realised the effect his story was having on him.
“Yes,” he murmured, and shivered again.
“Jesus.” Hoey sat taut out over the table now. “You’re joking me. Why didn’t you wake me up or something?”
“For what?”
“So’s I could, you know…”
Minogue shrugged.
“Is there any follow-up on it yet?”
The Inspector shook his head. “I’m going to get the car now. I hope it’s still in one piece.”
Hoey narrowed his eyes and flicked a glance at the closed door.
“Wait a minute, here,” he said. “Do we really need to get caught up in some shooting match here in Ennis? Do we? This sort of says to me. that it’s time to pull back. For the moment, at any rate.”
Minogue did a quick calculation of Hoey’s words, his tone.
“With those Response Units foostering around, like,” Hoey added. “It’s like waiting for something to blow up.”
Minogue didn’t want to argue with a Hoey who this morning looked almost robust compared to how Minogue himself felt. He dodged Hoey’s eyes.
“Well. I’ll have a wash and a shave and we’ll mosey on over to the hotel for now.”
An unmarked Garda car materialised out of the fog, a creature with lights for eyes. Faces turned to look at Minogue as the car purred alongside. A face on the passenger side nodded at Minogue, and the car pulled in ahead of the two policemen.
“Who’re these fellas?” asked Hoey.
The far end of the street disappeared into the fog. Through the muffled whiteness Minogue heard the sounds of Ennis-clanging aluminium kegs as they were slung empty onto the brewery lorries from the doors of pubs, the shutters being rolled up on shops, the dull thumping of a hammer on metal somewhere close by-being carried on all around them.
“Cuddy, from Limerick. Special Branch. I met him down at the brother’s farm and I down visiting.”
“How’s the man?” said Cuddy.
“Better met than the last time, I’m thinking,” said Minogue. Cuddy gave a wan smile and nodded at Hoey.
“Shea Hoey,” said Minogue. “Works with me.”
“Are ye official here?”
“No, we’re not. But there seems to be an oversupply of Guards who are.”
A squeaky transmission erupted from a radio in the car. The driver turned it down.
“Were ye in town here last night?” asked Cuddy.
“Matter of fact, we were.”
Cuddy looked down the street before confiding more.
“We’re going to keep up the pressure. Something has to give, I just know it.”
He looked up under his eyebrows at Minogue as if daring him to recall aloud the episode at the farm. The Inspector looked beyond the policeman at the shroud of fog.
“Good luck,” he said to Cuddy.
The car slid down the street ahead of them before being swallowed up in the whiteness.
Alo Crossan was not yet in the dining room, but the Howards were. So were two detectives-replacements for the ones Minogue had travelled with last night. Their eyes were on Minogue and Hoey from the moment they appeared in the door of the dining-room. One of the detectives stood and the other kicked his chair back slightly with a coiled, careful nudge of his leg, Minogue noticed, as he laid his hands in his lap. His jacket came open as he leaned forward in his chair.
Howard waved, his mouth full.
“They’re Guards,” he struggled to say around the food. “Don’t worry.”
The Howards wore the same clothes he had seen them in last night. Minogue wondered if he himself could ever get away with such dereliction and still look well-dressed. Howard, with his shirt open two buttons, unshaven, looked genially rakish. Sheila Howard looked relaxed and curious. Something in the couple’s appearance startled the Inspector. He felt the beginnings of a blush as he approached them. They looked to him like a couple full and languid after a night of lovemaking. Howard made an elaborate swallow.
“…absolutely refused to eat a breakfast above in a hotel room,” he said. Minogue felt Sheila Howard’s eyes on him.
“Yes, yes,” the Inspector replied, working clumsily around an image of Sheila Howard’s body. He glanced at her by way of greeting. The detective sat down and the other sat back in his chair with a nod.
“Howarya,” one said to Hoey.
Dan Howard waved his arm at two vacant chairs. “Join us, can’t you?”
“Thanks, but we’re expecting company.” Minogue looked at his watch. It was ten minutes before nine.
“How are you now?” asked Minogue.
Howard exchanged looks with his wife.
“Could be better,” he said. “But sure, considering the alternatives… Yourself?”
“I’ve been worse,” Minogue avoided. “Any news from the house?”
Howard sat up and crossed his ankles.
“Yes, there is, and it’s not bad at all. There was nothing in the cars. And there’s nothing else suspicious about the house itself. So there.”
“Was that your yoke up at the house?” one of the detectives asked. “The blue one?”
Minogue glanced over at the boxer’s nose, the untidy moustache.
“Yep. Is it in one piece?”
“For the most part. Sure, that wasn’t a new car anyhow.”
“That Fiat was and is a damn fine car,” said Minogue. “What did they do to it?”
“They wheeled up a big shield. First they shook the car, then they drilled the lock on the boot-”
“They drilled out me lock?”
“The robot did.”
“With the video camera next to it,” the other detective piped in. “That’s it. Never saw the likes of it in action. It was great.”
His partner nodded, sharing in an accomplishment he had had no part in. Minogue sat down heavily next to Hoey. A waitress approached. Minogue looked to the window: no Jamesy Bourke standing vigil across the street ever again, he thought. At least the fog was beginning to lift. The waitress picked at a button on her blouse.
“I dunno,” said Minogue. “Coffee for a start, I suppose.”
Dan Howard rose from the table and cocked an eye at the Inspector. Me? Minogue fingered his chest. Howard nodded in the direction of the foyer.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Hoey shifted in his chair and reached for his cigarettes. The hard-case with the moustache accompanied Howard to the foyer.
“I have to make me confession,” Howard said to him. “You wouldn’t want to listen in on my sins, would you, but?”
The detective backed away a couple of paces. Howard’s amused expression lingered as he made a quick search of Minogue’s face.
“A word out of earshot of Sheila, if you don’t mind,” Howard began. “I woke up shaking this morning, I can tell you. But not that shook that I couldn’t see that the thing last night wasn’t about murdering anybody.” He paused and smiled. “What do you think, yourself?”
Minogue studied the smile.
“I’m inclined to agree with you.”
“Publicity, I put it down to,” said Howard. “Brazen, cocky. A half-arsed effort to be like the War of Independence, making the country ungovernable.”
“I thought the parliamentarians and public service were well on the way to achieving that already.”
Howard chortled.
“You still have your wits about you anyway. But I’m sure part of the plan might be to have the likes of me close shop and hide up in Dublin.”
“Which you may do…?”
“Hide, no,” Howard murmured. “Stay there awhile, yes. I was going to go up for a few weeks to finish off the sitting anyway. There are bills coming up for final reading and… Well, you know, the hazards of public office, I suppose.”
“Going back up to Dublin?”
Howard smiled. “Not that alone. No. I meant shootings. I imagine that Alo wouldn’t be so keen on this side of public life, any more than I am myself.”
Said so easily, it took Minogue several seconds to realise that the remark had carried a charge of something else. What had he missed?
“As to…?”
Howard looked at some point on Minogue’s forehead.
“You know that Alo has his own plans for public office, I take it.”
The Inspector felt his cobwebby, morning mind awaken with a sharp stab. He looked again to Howard’s face but all he met with was the fixed look, a stare both sardonic and intent.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Alo will be running for something. I wondered if you knew. Yes. County Council, I hear. Fine man that he is, Alo may not have considered the kinds of attention we received last night. Very effective way to get national attention, firing off gunshots in the window of the local TD’s house.”
Howard folded his arms and leaned against the wall.
“I’m sure someone will be happy to take the credit for last night soon enough. They’ll not be frightening me out of office, I can tell you.”
Minogue thought of Crossan and felt his resentment grow suddenly large. The detective with the moustache crossed the foyer toward them just as a young man in a leather jacket came through the door of the hotel. Howard’s smile turned into a grin.
“Thanks be to the hand of God,” he murmured. “Tom Neilon from The Clare Champion. The press is here-we’re saved. I’ll see you again?”
Minogue stood aside and studied the carpet. His thoughts staggered around, colliding into one another. Was Crossan having him on all this while? He trudged back to the table. Crossan had arrived and was talking to a wary Hoey about horse-racing, something Minogue had never heard Hoey show an interest in before. The lawyer seemed to pick up on Minogue’s mood.
“Trouble?” asked Crossan.
Minogue sat down on the edge of the chair and looked beyond Crossan’s shoulder to Sheila Howard. To an innocent eye, she was looking through a newspaper, but Minogue noted her attention directed in her side vision toward his table.
“That was a hell of a thing last night,” said Hoey to Crossan.
“Don’t be talking, man,” said Crossan. “It was wild.”
“It’s hard to imagine that whoever was doing the shooting was actually meaning to kill anybody,” Minogue said in a low voice.
“How does it change things for us?” Crossan said. “That’s what we need to decide this morning.”
The Inspector felt the resentment turn to anger as he turned to Crossan.
“There’s something I just heard which may change our approach, counsellor. Dan Howard said something to me that I wish I’d known before now. Concerns you, counsellor. Or should I say councillor?”
Minogue gave Crossan the full weight of his stare which, along with the calm tone and expression, had unnerved even the likes of Kilmartin. A screen seemed to come over Crossan’s eyes and his eyelids relaxed a little. He looked down his nose at Minogue.
“Go ahead, Guard,” he said. “And don’t stint yourself either.”
“You are interested, involved, planning, intending-whatever-to run for some public office, something in the line of politics, aren’t you?”
Crossan spoke with light-hearted whimsy. “Well, I thought I might take a run at being a town councillor here in Ennis.” He arched his eyebrows. “Do you think I’d be right for the job, now?”
“If you’re planning to waltz into public office by dragging people through the mud or, perish the thought, playing trick-of-the-loop with me, I can tell you that-”
“That I’d be the equal of any of the blackguards in politics at the moment?”
Hoey folded his arms and studied the sugar bowl.
“That you’d be a damn sight worse than them,” Minogue retorted. “You won’t be making a monkey out of me en route either, mister.”
Crossan’s eyes locked on Minogue’s.
“That’s a very harsh judgement, Your Worship. Rest assured I’ll be launching an immediate appeal.”
“That’s nothing to what will happen if I find out that you’ve been codding me here.”
“Don’t be such a gobshite, Minogue!”
The Inspector leaned forward in his chair.
“Don’t you be stupid, counsellor,” he retorted. “If I think that you inveigled us down here or concocted bits of information to suit your own ends, all as a way to run the Howards into the ditch because you have some grudges-”
“Hah! You must be the right gobshite entirely! Do you think I’m interested in making you look stupid while Dan Howard gets dirt on him, is that it?”
“Declare your interest then,” Minogue growled.
“I belong to no party. No faction, no jobs-for-the-boys, no backscratchers! No fat-arse gombeens! What I would like to do, you probably wouldn’t understand. But for the record, I plan to go for election to Ennis town council. That way, I can get houses built for poor iijits so that they won’t end up breaking-and-entering and robbing and beating the shite out of one another, and then sloothering up to my door bothering me. I want to be put out of business. So there.”
Crossan leaned in over the table and pushed aside cups and saucers. Hoey blew smoke out the side of his mouth and blinked at the Inspector. Sheila Howard glanced over as did the detective at the table next to her. Crossan waited until she had returned to her newspaper and then he spoke behind his hands.
“They’re trying to derail you with this case-”
“This is not ‘a case,’” Minogue snapped. “And, for that matter, it wouldn’t take much this morning, with you trying to hang some class of a Chappaquiddick around Howard’s neck.”
“Don’t walk away from it now,” said Crossan.
“What are we walking away from? Except for finding out that people did stupid things. Guards included.”
Crossan pointed at the table as if explaining a route on a map.
“Lookit,” he said, “Jamesy Bourke is dead. Whatever life he had before that was torn away from him by the State. Jane Clark went back to where she came from little more than a bucketful of cinders.”
“And you want to tar-and-feather the Howards and a few Guards on the head of it?” Minogue asked.
“Are you going to ignore what we’ve discussed? Bourke’s trial?” Crossan raised his hands. “Can you? Do you think for one minute that I’d sit here telling you this if I didn’t believe in what I was doing?” He looked to Hoey as though he were a judge considering an appeal.
“Don’t look at me,” Hoey murmured. “I’m from Galway.”
Crossan turned his attention back to Minogue again. He spat out the words in a harsh whisper.
“You’re backing away from your own instincts. Covering for your pals beyond in the Garda Station. For all I heard about you, Minogue, now I know you’re a quitter.”
“Oh, so you did some research, did you, before you put out the bait?”
“Yes, I did-I freely admit it. It was too good a thing to pass up when your nephew hired me. I began to think you weren’t the common-or-garden cop so then I thought well, this must be meant to happen. The fates had turned kind to Jamesy for once in his bloody existence!” Crossan sat back, his eyes still blazing.
“But what I had underestimated was the degree to which Guards will cover up for one another.”
“I do not,” said Minogue. “So shut up throwing things at me. I have enough lumps on me head from pulling down things off high shelves, things I didn’t know were so damned heavy and awkward when I got the notion to take a look at them.”
“What is it, then?” Crossan pursued him. “Is it frightened you are after last night?”
“I think differently about the Howards after last night.” Minogue heard the defensive tone in his own voice. “So I don’t much like you sitting in their house, slashing away at them, in however clever a manner.”
“Hah,” Crossan growled, and sat back with an expression of disbelief. His eyes widened in glee and he glared at Minogue.
“You like her nibs, do you?” He nodded toward Sheila Howard but kept his eyes on Minogue. “And the heroic Dan standing steadfast here in outlaw country and won’t be intimidated? Our Clare Camelot, by Christ!”
Minogue said nothing but returned Crossan’s look with the policeman’s neutral observation of a specimen.
“Heroes, is it?” Crossan went on. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first to fall under her spell, so you wouldn’t. Dan the man owes half his success to her. Twice the man he’ll ever be. He has the charm and the rest of it but she’s the backbone of the operation. Make no mistake, Minogue. The Howards are going places. ‘She’ll drive Dan to the Park,’ they say here. And that’s his supporters saying that behind their hands, too.”
A cease-fire arrived in the form of the waitress who began unloading plates. Hoey might be right, the Inspector reflected. Get the hell out of the way of whatever was going to happen in the wake of last night’s shooting. Leave County Clare to the brick-faced gymnasts and ditch-crawlers with their submachine pistols and their souped-up, prowling Granadas.
“Don’t be rehashing public house gossip about the Howards to me,” Minogue murmured. “The Howards can do what they want.”
Crossan slouched back in his chair and joined his fingertips under his nose. Now, looking over at Minogue, his searching eyes seemed monstrous. Minogue looked away in exasperation toward the window. For a split second he saw the tall, bearded Bourke and his dog at the wall across the street. He shook his head and blinked. His nerves were more rattled than he had realised. When Crossan spoke again, his voice had taken on the scornful, challenging tone of the courtroom.
“So tell me what you want to tell me then, and get it over with.”
Minogue let him hang for several seconds. The same Bourke screaming in his dream last night, the circle of faces gathered around the blazing cottage.
“I want to eat my breakfast,” he said.
Crossan rounded on him.
“So you’ve been put off by Dan Howard putting a flea in your ear then? Or is it because her nibs has put stars in your eyes?”
There were small trembling shapes in front of Minogue’s eyes when he looked away from the window at Crossan. His chest was swollen with the anger and his arms tingled. Hoey divined his anger and sat forward, closer to the lawyer, staring across at his colleague’s face. Crossan looked away momentarily, then returned to the Inspector’s reddening face. Crossan dropped his knife and fork on the table and reached into his jacket pocket. He drew out an envelope and dropped it in front of Minogue’s plate.
“What’s this?” he asked. “More snapshots?”
Crossan didn’t reply.
Minogue flicked it over and saw that it was addressed to himself. He fingered through a hole in the flap and tore open the letter. The page was a photocopy of what looked like a bill.
“There are two names on there that you’ll recognise,” said Crossan. “I didn’t anticipate having to give you this so soon, but I’m not going to sit here and fight a losing battle with the pair of ye.”
Minogue read the name Thomas J. Naughton. Hoey wiped his fingers on the serviette. Minogue handed him the paper.
“That’s a dividend statement for Naughton. He’s a shareholder in that outfit. Dalcais.”
“What’s Dalcais?”
“Dalcais owns four hotels, one folk village and a castle where the Yanks sit down to mediaeval banquets after they are carted off the jumbos down in Shannon.”
“Put things together then,” Minogue said to Crossan. “Let me hear it from you.”
“I’m giving you this to catch Naughton on the hop. He might just clam up on you. Naughton was the first Guard to the fire that night, remember. Ask me who owns 53 per cent of Dalcais.”
“The Howards.”
“Not bad,” said Crossan.
“Why didn’t you tell me this last week?”
“Because I didn’t need to and you didn’t need to know either. It’d prejudice matters.”
“My God, man, I didn’t know you had such delicate nerves,” said Minogue. “No more shenanigans. What the hell else have you up your sleeve?”
“I admit that I need ye here to shake up the place. That’s my strategy here. Ye’re Guards, ye’re down from Dublin. We need to shake up the box and see what falls out-”
“Give us a bit of plain English, man,” Minogue cut in.
“I told you that I couldn’t find anything in the trial records that’d help Jamesy. And I’m not optimistic that anything can come from a full transcript of the trial either. My only real chance is to put a bit of pressure on people and see what happens.”
“Damn-all will happen except buckets of trouble if you’re playing us for iijits,” said Minogue.
“You want a token and you got it,” Crossan resumed in a scoffing tone. “How did I get it and copy it? I tracked down the firm that handles Naughton’s stuff-his will and deeds and the rest of it. I paid a clerk by the name of Margaret Hickey a hundred quid to get me anything on Naughton. Christ, man, that’s the damn prejudice I’m talking about! To hell with Naughton and the rest of them-it’s myself I’m throwing to the wolves here!”
Minogue glared one-eyed at the lawyer.
“Now. Are ye still in, or what?”
“What are you going to do if and when you have to tell anyone how you came by this?” asked Minogue.
“Do you really need to ask me that? You’re the Garda inspector. The quiet fella here in the corner is taking it all in too. My goose is well and truly cooked now. I have no other tricks for ye. So what do ye say?”
Minogue poured lukewarm coffee from the jug and tried to think. The most he could do was dither. Crossan had taken a big risk handing him this paper and telling him in front of Hoey what he had done. And yet it could lead into another cul-de-sac. Wasn’t Naughton entitled to buy and sell any damned shares he wanted? Couldn’t he sink his money into any investment he might have heard about during his years in Ennis? Like nuns, teachers and publicans, Guards were notoriously cute with their money.
Minogue looked at the photocopy again.
“How long has he been receiving dividends?”
Crossan shook his head. “I could find out but I’d be digging me grave deeper. Listen. I was looking for where to put some pressure. Any weak point. Naughton had the name of being an alcoholic, but he had it well under wraps. Didn’t you ever meet an alcoholic that kept at it for years and years, hail-fellow-well-met? Could do his job and turn up every day but had his bottle hidden above the cistern in the jacks, hah?”
To his side Hoey blinked and froze. Minogue nodded.
“Well, Naughton was one but he didn’t drink all his money by the looks of that. It’s not a fortune by any means, but it’d pad out a pension into real comfort. I’m still waiting for your answer.”
Minogue glanced at Hoey.
“We’ll proceed with Naughton in Limerick this morning,” he said.
Crossan’s face seemed to lift as Hoey’s frown descended. The barrister flipped his wrist over and drew his cuff back from his watch.
“It’ll take you until dinner-time if you go to Limerick right now. I even have Naughton’s address here. Find out from him-”
“What do you think we should be finding?” Hoey asked.
“Ah, for Christ’s sake, don’t you start in on me now!” Crossan snapped. “Have ye forgotten everything we’ve talked about?”
Minogue repeated Hoey’s question. “What do you think we should be finding?”
Crossan spoke in a controlled, even tone.
“Garda incompetence. New evidence. Changes in testimony. Gaps in testimony. Inconsistencies in testimony. Don’t tell me that you decided to spend your off-time down here only because I put you up to it!”
“You’re right, I won’t,” said Minogue.
Crossan looked at his watch again and drew in a breath.
“When do you think you’ll get back from Limerick? I mean, how long do you think you’ll be…?”
Minogue was rubbing his eyes slowly and distractedly. He kept it up for a half-minute before he paused, opened his eyes and looked at Hoey.
“As long as it takes, counsellor,” he said.
Crossan bounded up from his chair, plucked the photocopy from the table and launched his lanky body toward the foyer.
“I’ll phone a taxi for ye this very minute,” Minogue heard him say.
“What a tricky bastard,” said Hoey.
Minogue shrugged. His anger was gone now.
“Well, a point in his favour has to be the way he’s put himself out with the Dalcais stuff,” Minogue offered. “But I just wish to God he had told us about his plans before Dan Howard told me.”
“Very tricky people down this part of the country,” said Hoey. “Still don’t trust him as much as…”
A yawn stole the rest of Hoey’s words. Minogue’s Fiat leaned into a bend on the dual carriageway that skirted Shannon Airport. The fog had given way to a blue sky. The sun was hard and bright on the windscreen of Minogue’s car. A jet passed low overhead, its shadow racing across the fields inland.
“No rest for the wicked,” said Hoey, and returned to looking out the window.
Minogue turned the mirror down until he saw the boot-lid bouncing against the rope he had been given to tie it down. His thoughts went to Naughton, and he recalled Naugton’s growl when he had phoned with a wrong-number yarn. Naughton was sixty-six. Still going strong, was Crossan’s arch description. Not bad for a drunkard, in other words. He thought of Hoey then. The Inspector’s misgivings broke free of their leash and tumbled into words.
“Shea, it just occurred to me that I may have drawn you into a big pile of…”
“What?”
Minogue tried to put some order on the words.
“I wonder if maybe I’m doing something very, very stupid indeed here.” The words dried up. His mind returned to the porpoises as the suburbs of Limerick joined up with the road. He imagined them smirking as they turned from the starlit harbours of the west of Ireland out to sea.
“Look, Shea, I know you’re far from keen at this stage. I could leave you off at the train station as long as you promise me-”
Startled, Hoey looked over at Minogue. The Inspector braked hard for a traffic light by the Gaelic Athletic grounds. They were a mile yet from the Sarsfield Bridge into Limerick.
“I mean, it’s nothing to me basically,” Minogue went on, “I can take it, but you-”
“I have my career to consider?”
“Well…”
“Well, what?” said Hoey.
Minogue started off from the light but forgot that he had left the car in third. The Fiat staggered and stalled.
“I don’t want to pull you down with me,” Minogue muttered. Hoey began to laugh. He tried to stop but he couldn’t.