Had he slept? Jesus Christ. Minogue’s heart gave a leap, and he grasped the steering wheel tighter. He stared toward the limit of the headlight beam and flicked it on to full. A red band of sky bled into honey was alongside them, whipped by passing trees. Branches wrung from the trees by last month’s gales still lay in ditches, their white stumps catching the headlights. How had he got this far on automatic pilot? Hoey was half-slumped, half-curled into his seat. Minogue had seen his eyelids batting occasionally. Where the hell were they now? As if on cue, a sign to Kilmihill lit up on the curb ahead. Another twenty minutes to Ennis, so. Closer to the sign he made out the white paint on the wall underneath: “Brits out now.” He slowed and decided that the clumsy picture drawn on the wall was a rendition of an M-16. The paint had dribbled down, like white blood, the Inspector thought. The Fiat’s lights followed the bend, straightened and dropped the slogan into the night again.
He remembered coming over the bog roads from the ferry, the boot-lid rising and falling, snapping against the string which had slackened. The River Shannon had been silver as the ferry nosed out into the estuary toward Clare. He remembered the salmon light from the west reaching out to cover the water too, and he had looked for the fins and backs on the water. Ten minutes of strained searching over the water had yielded nothing more than disappointment. The two cups of coffee in Tralee had kept him going until they drove up the ramp on the Clare shore. Minogue was perplexed by the strange fusion of relief and foreboding he felt as they hit the back road toward Ennis.
A half-dozen cars trailed an articulated lorry driving against them. Their lights burned into Minogue’s gritty eyes. Hoey blew out a cloud of smoke. He seemed little concerned with concealing his sarcasm.
“Any more dispatches from HQ?”
“No,” replied Minogue. “He said he’d locate the Howards for us. I’ll phone in the morning to find out from him.”
“You didn’t go into any detail about how we’re getting on, though?”
“No. I don’t know how we’re getting on, that’s why.”
“And being the man he is, he’s waiting to see what comes of it,” said Hoey. “At a safe distance, of course.”
Minogue detoured around by Market Street, drove by the Friary and parked outside the Garda Station.
“Let’s check if there are any, em, breakthroughs here,” Minogue said to Hoey’s unspoken question. Hoey followed the Inspector through the towering gate pillars.
“Whoa,” said Minogue, slowing, “Look at them.”
Two vans with Dublin registrations were parked on a tarred island in front of the station door. Orange glare from quartz lights over the avenue fell on a car which Minogue and Hoey recognised.
Ahearne, the sergeant, came through the doorway behind the counter and said hello to Minogue. He was in civvies, brown corduroy jeans and a hand-knit beige jumper over his blue uniform shirt.
“And how are ye?” he whispered.
“A bit on the tired side.”
“Aha.” Ahearne’s eyes went from Minogue to Hoey and back.
“We were passing so we just dropped in to see what headway there was with this incident last night,” said Minogue. “Over at the Howards.”
“Oh, that business,” said Ahearne. Now Minogue was sure that Ahearne was buying time.
“Yes. The shooting thing,” Minogue repeated.
“Terrible, to be sure, wasn’t it?” said Ahearne. “Well, I’m not very well up on that at all, being as I’m-”
Through the doorway at speed came Superintendent Russell. His eyes were on Minogue’s the moment his head appeared around the swinging door. Minogue felt his throat constrict. The light in the room seemed to become a little dimmer. Russell came to an abrupt stop by the counter in front of Minogue.
“Thanks, D.J.,” said Russell.
Ahearne had to work his way around the now firmly planted Superintendent. Minogue sheltered in a slow official monotone.
“We came in to find out if there was progress in the investigation of last night’s shooting at the Howards’ house.”
The door to the public office had stopped swinging but Minogue believed that someone was right behind the door, listening.
“I was in touch with the Commissioner some hours ago,” said Russell. He paused to press his tongue against his front teeth. “And I tried to impress upon him that you two should be hauled back to Dublin and put in front of a Disciplinary Tribunal.”
“ Quam celerime?” asked Minogue.
The sarcasm from Russell was laboured. “I beg your pardon?”
“How soon would you like us to go?”
Russell drew a finger up from his side with a motion that reminded Minogue of a cowboy drawing a gun. He jabbed his finger in the direction of Minogue’s heart.
“Yesterday. That would have left Tom Naughton alive.”
Hoey shuffled his feet. Minogue wanted to tell him to stop.
“I don’t know what yous fellas learn by way of technique in your line of work,” Russell continued, his finger still aimed at Minogue’s chest. “I heard ye could be rough enough if the job had to get done. But, by Jesus”- he directed the finger up to Minogue’s shoulders now-“harassing a retired Guard to the point of doing what he did, or what you say he did-”
“Where did he get the pistol?”
“Shut up, Guard,” Russell snapped and he leaned over the counter. “Dirty work, bucko, that’s what that was. Very dirty work. I can tell you that if I had the full authority, I’d have you two in a cell here or in Tralee or somewhere and then kicked off back up to Dublin to face the music. That way, you’d cause no more havoc here!”
Minogue studied the red-faced Superintendent. The corrugated, wiry hair stayed in place. Like steel wool, he thought, stapled to his head. The furrowed brow like someone had scraped across it with their nails many years ago, the eyes set back in his head, tiny and fierce. Minogue’s eyes moved purposely and impudently down from the Superintendent’s face. Four-button cardigan bought in a shop, a sports shirt which cost a lot.
“Where did Naughton get the gun?” he asked.
Russell slapped his hand on the counter-top. “We’ll find out in due course-not that it’s any damn concern of yours! You’re bloody lucky he didn’t turn the thing on you.”
He began waving his finger in an indeterminate pattern which Minogue believed could be an ellipse.
“If and when I find out how you pressured him into doing what he did-if indeed he did it and you’re to be believed about it-I’ll personally see to it that you two go to the wall for it. Pension and all, by God.”
“No word on the shooting at the Howards’?” asked Minogue.
“No, there isn’t any word of the shooting at the Howards’ last night,” Russell mimicked. The front door opening behind Minogue left Russell’s lips shaped with what he was ready to hurl at the duo. Minogue turned to see the four men filing in. Guards, detectives, they returned Minogue’s nod. Russell took a deep breath and waved at the swing door behind him.
“Go on ahead in, lads,” he said between his teeth.
More detectives, Minogue thought. Russell here after hours, called in from his home-for what? Were they expecting an operation tonight? Russell looked down his shoulder as the last of the foursome went through the doorway. Then he looked, back at Minogue.
“I’m told ye’re not conducting an investigation but merely ‘an inquiry.’”
Sounds like Tynan’s sophistry, Minogue thought. It had probably enraged Russell. The Superintendent’s finger went back to its wavering survey of Minogue’s chest.
“I’ve let it be known that if ye two get in our way here, I won’t be responsible for you.” His finger swivelled across to Hoey but the eyes stayed on Minogue’s.
“Here’s my advice: get to hell out of here. I mean Ennis, Clare and the west of Ireland in general. If you have any legitimate reasons for being here with your ‘inquiries,’ then they have to wait. We have work to do that’s a damn sight more important. Got that?”
Minogue took a step back and put his hands in his coat pockets. Strategic withdrawal as opposed to retreat. He watched Russell pitch a peppermint into his mouth from a considerable distance. Some trick, he thought. Big mouth?
“And another thing,” Russell called out. “I’m going to find out what you did. Then I’m coming after you. This is exactly the kind of fiasco I’ve spent years trying to persuade three Commissioners-soon it’ll be four-that we need to avoid. Dublin doesn’t rule the roost, mister. You tell ’em that up there: Those days are long gone. And tell Kilmartin too.”
“Tell the crowd sitting around the back office in that meeting we dragged you out of too,” said Minogue with an edge in his voice.
Russell hammered the counter before waving them toward the door.
“At least they’re proper professionals! They know what they’re up against!”
“The beef’s nice,” said the waitress. “They don’t overcook it like a lot of places do. Hardly a pick of fat to it.”
Minogue sat down opposite, looking a lot less annoyed. Hoey fiddled with his fork, trying to trap his knife between the tines.
“We’re expecting another one in a few minutes,” said the Inspector. He looked up sideways at her. “Put me down for the fish.”
“Something light,” said Hoey. “An omelette with nothing in it maybe.”
The waitress pencilled it in, smiled and turned on her heel.
“Do you think Russell is trying to cover for Naughton or someone else?”
“I doubt it,” replied the Inspector. “It’s more a case of look-after-our-own, to my way of thinking. Until he knows the facts of what happened down in Naughton’s place, he’ll be full of-”
Hoey shivered and dropped the fork.
“God,” he hissed, and shivered again. “Just remembering it now gives me the willies. I don’t know now if I can face up to a dinner…”
Minogue wondered when the shock would return to him in full. Would he wake up in the early hours, his own heart hammering, the pistol shot echoing in his ears, the awful liquid thud as the bullet tore into Naughton?
Again he considered phoning Tynan. Tell him what, exactly? Something stinks, John. Tynan’s subtle communication by not communicating struck him again. If Inspector Matthew Minogue were actually to phone him, the Garda Commissioner might well be obliged to recall Minogue ex officio to Dublin. Russell had probably levelled warnings at Tynan that the Commissioner could no longer fend off. Tynan had obviously not passed anything on to Kilmartin-yet, at any rate-because the said Chief Inspector’did not seem at all aware of Naughton’s suicide. But this was different now, Minogue knew as he looked across the almost empty dining-room. Guards of any stripe did not like to hear of one of their own killing himself, especially a retired one who was being interviewed by other Guards skilled at driving a man into a corner. Even Jimmy Kilmartin might have to stay on the sidelines if Russell went on a rampage over it.
“You’re sure she didn’t mention anything about a row with Tidy Howard that night?” Hoey asked. “Or that she had left the pub either, in the car-”
“Just let me talk to her first,” Minogue murmured. “Hear what she says. Then we can alibi her or look for corroboration.”
Hoey looked away and took a long drag on his cigarette.
“You’re shielding her from someone, aren’t you?” he said then. “Crossan, is it?”
Minogue blinked. He was ready with a retort about Hoey himself being shielded from Kilmartin when he spotted Crossan tramping across the dining-room carpet toward them. A relieved Minogue glanced at his colleague. Hoey’s stare stayed on the Inspector until Minogue looked away again to Crossan.
He pushed home the padlock on the cottage door, tested it and walked to the van. He was bone weary. They’d be finished this job in three weeks but he already planned to pad out the bill with a few days’ dossing. Plenty of money in Germany. The bastard’d never get tradesmen like him for twice his pay back in frigging Germany anyway. Nearly pitch-dark already, God. The radio was on in the van.
“Did you pack the blades and the masonry bits?” he called out.
“What?”
“The saw and masonry bits?”
“Yep. Are we right?”
An ad for holiday get-aways in Spain came on the radio. He clambered in and pulled the door behind him. The driver wriggled in the seat and started up the van. Get away from all this crap. Spain’d be nice. Take her too, do it in the water. Swimming and drinking and eating right. The lust hovering in his belly met with the misgivings sliding down his chest. She was getting out of hand: nearly running the show.
He looked across at his friend. Him, this, the dirt caked under his nails, the slogging away renovating this cottage for a German. And then to have people tell you that you were lucky to have a bloody job! Germany, he thought, and a little hope flared. Maybe. Drop everything, just walk away from it all and get a job over there. Be nobody there for a while. Tell nobody, just pack up one morning and go. No more worrying, holding back. No more watching and waiting. When was the money supposed to be rolling in anyway? You have to be patient, he was being told all the time, the insurance business takes time. Your clientele has to know that you’re serious. What about all the fucking Guards crawling all over the county this last while, he had protested. Be more careful, plan better and go at it, came the answer. They need to know that the cops can’t protect them, so they’ll have to strike a bargain in the end. The money’ll come in soon… Hah.
“You’re buying,” said the driver. The van wallowed at the end of the laneway.
“Aren’t you?”
“Amn’t I what?” The driver shifted in the seat and sat up from the chair-back.
“It’s your turn to buy the jar now.”
He didn’t answer but looked out into the night instead. Christ, the place had been emptied by emigration and famine, and now the rich wanted to take their holidays here. Culture, for God’s sakes-you can’t eat culture. They had money and they wanted culture: We have no money, just loads of culture. Sick joke. And he wanted receipts for every damn thing, this bloody German. He’d be flying into Shannon for the afternoon at the end of next week, coming to the cottage to inspect the work too. Suspicious, complaining. What effect would the Spillner thing have on them? They never just tell you that you did a good job. No thanks, just pay. Flying in for the afternoon, being driven up by a chauffeur probably.
The driver sat upright over the wheel and squirmed a little as he whistled to a tune on the radio.
“What are you doing? Is it fleas you have?”
“Ah, no. Are you buying or aren’t you?”
“Think of something else instead of the drink, can’t you?”
“Wouldn’t mind a ride, so…” The driver looked over knowingly and squirmed again.
“It must be fleas you have.”
“It’s my insurance policy.”
“What in the name of Jases are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m not going to be a sitting duck-”
The passenger suddenly understood. He lunged across and shoved his hand under the back of the driver’s jacket.
“Here! Fuck off, Ciaran! I’m driving!”
He felt it but the driver sat back and pinned his hand against the seat.
“Stop, can’t you, or the van’ll be in the ditch!”
He leaned over with his other hand and levered the driver forward. As he did, he grasped the pistol and yanked it out of the driver’s belt. He held it and ran his thumb toward the safety.
“You stupid, fucking iijit!”
“Gimme! Come on!” His voice was just short of a roar.
“You think this is going to help? Is this fucking cowboys and Indians you’re playing here or something?”
“Gimme, it’s mine!” The van was slowing. The driver held out his hand for the gun.
“Some kind of a fucking film you saw, is it? Jesus Christ, Finbarr! The place is rotten with fucking Guards and you’re walking around with a-”
“I’m not going to be caught with me pants down! I’m never going without a fight! Give it back, it’s my decision!”
“It’s not even your fucking gun, any more than it’s mine, you gobshite! He got this out of a dump along with the other stuff. We’re not supposed to have it-”
“It’s us that’s doing the dirty work! Don’t mind him! We’re the ones putting our arses on the line! And what do we have to show for it? Nothing! Fuck-all, that’s what! So don’t tell me how to carry on!”
The passenger laid the pistol on the floor and covered it with newspaper. To his astonishment, his anger had vanished. In its place was an overpowering feeling that he had lost something. It brought an ache of regret and hope to his chest. The driver picked up on the change in his friend and he returned his hand to the wheel.
“Come on now, let’s not be bickering,” he murmured. “We have to look out for one another, hah? Come on, now. We’ve always done it, haven’t we? It’s me and you, Ciaran.”
It was a sorrow he hadn’t felt since childhood, that sense of injustice and things going irretrievably astray which caused the passenger’s eyes to sting. What was the point, he thought. He couldn’t fight this. Spain. He knew then that tomorrow he’d be thinking about it all again. Maybe even Germany, work a few years away from all this, get a stake and buy a house back home. He thought about her then and that familiar turbulence began in his stomach. What would she do?
“Well?” said the driver.
“Shut up awhile, can’t you?” he mumbled. “And just fucking drive.”
“That’s right,” said Minogue, and reached for his cup.
“Up in Dublin,” Crossan added.
“That’s how it looks,” said the Inspector. He adopted a patient tone which he hoped the barrister would decode.
“So when I find out where, I’ll be talking to her.”
Hoey dropped a depleted ice-cube into his mouth and crunched it.
“You’ll let me know, so,” said Crossan.
“You may rely on it,” said Minogue with a heavier emphasis.
“Is there going to be an internal Garda investigation about Naughton?”
“We’re back off to Dublin tomorrow,” said Minogue. “Until I find out what Sheila Howard tells me this time around, I don’t know about any internal investigation.”
“But what Naughton told you about the fire suggests there was some kind of collusion going on,” said Crossan.
Minogue laid down his cup with a solid thud. “Collusion isn’t a term we should be throwing around here now.”
“Yet, you mean,” Crossan tossed in. “Step back a minute and look at what we have. Fact: Eilo McInerny was paid money to leave Ireland. Fact: We cannot account for key people the night of the fire. Fact: Naughton had a nice fat pad to his pension. Fact: Naughton knew plenty about that night, more than he was willing to tell you. Fact: Naughton killed himself out of some sense of duty or loyalty,”-he paused and looked from Minogue to Hoey-“to someone or something. It’s time to raise dust here, I say. Make it official. Time for your ‘inquiry’ to grow up into a proper investigation.”
Hoey looked up at the ceiling and blew smoke toward a lampshade.
“I think we need to talk to her first.” Minogue realised that his words had betrayed something. “I mean that I need to assess how, er, Eilo McInerny’s allegations may affect the situation and so on.”
“Aha,” Crossan barked. “Allegations. We have allegators now, do we? Maybe we’re getting somewhere now.”
Trapped, Minogue floundered further. He heard his words sound an ignominious retreat into the formal, public language of a policeman. He did not look at Hoey as he spoke.
“I don’t need to remind you that this is a delicate matter. We’re obliged to respect the parties’ rights. Things must remain as allegations-”
“Naughton blew his brains out,” said Crossan.
“-while we sift through what’s to be had in the line of information-”
“Are you or aren’t you going to press for a full investigation when you confer with your, em, colleagues?”
Minogue took a few seconds to absorb Crossan’s sarcasm.
“I give my word that I-we’ll-keep you as fully informed as we possibly can.”
He waited for another dig from the lawyer but none came. Crossan’s gaze lingered on him, but then he swept it away. The waitress timed a visit to coincide with the truce.
“No, thanks,” Minogue said, and held his hand over the glass. “Put it all on the one bill, if you please.”
“I can’t be bought off,” said Crossan. His voice had lost its edge, the Inspector noted. “But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t try again with other blandishments.”
Minogue decided it was time for a Parthian shot.
“You can return the favour if you carry an election sometime in the future, counsellor. Only as long as it’s won fair and square.”
“Oh, the sting off that,” said Crossan, regaining some vigour. “Dublin hasn’t softened your tongue as regards digs.”
The drowsiness was heavy across Minogue’s chest now, cocooning and holding him fast in the chair in Ennis, County Clare. The curtains were drawn in the dining-room. Half-seven. Should he have tried to drive back to Dublin instead of sitting to a dinner with Crossan? All the lawyer had done was to grill him about why he wasn’t doing what Crossan himself thought needed done. Even Hoey was looking askance at his judgement. If he closed his eyes, he’d nod off, he believed.
“You’ll be in touch,” said the lawyer.
The smell of a fry woke Minogue. His whole body ached. He felt as if he were anchored to the bed, like Gulliver pinned. Is this what a stroke does, he wondered, and thought of Tidy Howard. The mattress was too soft, and he had rolled into a hollow where he had been boiled by a heavy eiderdown into a state of sweaty, aching immobility. Ten to nine, he saw on his watch. And he had worried that he was too wound up to sleep.
He struggled to sit up in bed. A fragment of a dream slid by him before he could see it clearly: a fire, he knew, but… He rubbed at his eyes for a full minute. Then he picked up his watch again and strapped it on. He had slept for eleven hours. He remembered that Mrs McNamara had kept him talking through the news when Hoey and he had come in last night. He had phoned Kathleen, he recalled, and had done a good job of editing out the greater part of the day’s proceedings.
He drew the curtains back a little. For a moment he wondered if he were still asleep and dreaming. As his eyes became used to the light he could make out the looming forms in the fog beyond Mrs McNamara’s tidy, wet garden. He dressed and packed his bag. At least he’d get to steal into Bewleys in Dublin today. He knocked on Hoey’s door but there was no answer. He opened the door to find Hoey’s bed made. His toothbrush, several packets of Majors and pieces of folded paper were on a dressing table. One of them was an airmail envelope with jagged paper by the opened flap. He closed the door and headed for the parlour. Mrs McNamara’s head inclined out the kitchen door to intercept him.
“Come in,” she called out. “I thought I heard someone stirring.”
“Hello, missus. Is there any sign of the other lad?”
“Oh, Seamus?” she beamed. Mrs McNamara was holding a spatula aslant across her chest. “He’s gone out, so he is.”
Minogue followed her into the kitchen. A stirring in a chair by the Aga drew his eyes to an elfin figure sitting next to the range. The old woman looked out over her hands, which rested on the handle of a blackthorn walking-stick, and issued a myopic smile. Were there more dwarfs hiding about the house? He turned to greet the old woman.
“Good day to you, ma’am.”
“And yourself, now,” she croaked back.
The Inspector turned back to Mrs Mac.
“Excuse me now, but did he say where he was going?”
“He went out to get sausages. Such a memory I have, I didn’t have a sausage in the house and he offered to go out.”
Maybe gone AWOL to get a bloody half-bottle of whiskey or something. He turned to head back to the hallway.
“Ah, sit down, can’t you? He’ll be back in a minute.” Mrs McNamara’s voice began to go up. “Sure he’s only gone a few minutes.” She pushed Minogue toward the old woman. Maybe he’d pushed Hoey too hard or something?
“Mrs Moran here comes by of a morning,” Mrs McNamara went on in a louder voice. “Don’t you, Mamie? And we have a cup of tea and a chat so as we catch up on the news about town.”
The seated elf must be in the high eighties, Minogue decided.
“Don’t trouble yourself to get up, now,” he muttered. He leaned down to grasp her bony fingers. Her skin reminded him of boiled chicken skin slipping over the bone.
“If and I don’t give it a try,” she answered back with a shrill, mewing voice, “I mightn’t be able to get up when I’d be needing to.”
Her denture slipped as she smiled up at the policeman. Minogue readied himself to catch her.
“Matt Minogue, missus. How do you do?”
His hands had ideas of their own. They stayed up, waiting for her to totter. She did not. She sat back with a sigh and the blackthorn wavered in front of her again.
“Yerra, there’s no good in grousing,” she shouted at Minogue. “And that’s a fact.”
Now Minogue knew why Hoey had gone on an errand so readily. Mrs McNamara shouted and waved the spatula at the window.
“Please God, we’ll get a bit of sun before dinner-time, Mamie.”
“Please God,” echoed Mrs Moran, and she shuddered. She clasped her blackthorn and, to Minogue’s consternation, licked the tip of her nose. How long a tongue did the woman have? Mrs McNamara turned from the cooker.
“Matt is a Guard, Mamie,” she roared. “He’s here on a holiday. Lot of excitement in town,” Mrs McNamara went on. “You heard someone took potshots at the Howards’ house, Mamie?”
Mrs McNamara swivelled around with her eyes wide and gave the Inspector a conspiratorial smile.
“Merciful hour,” said Mrs Moran. “Imagine that!”
She gave several spasms which Minogue suspected were poorly governed shrugs and her dentures came into play again.
“The times that we’re living in. ’Tis like The Troubles again.”
“If I might use the telephone?” asked Minogue.
“Oh, fire away, can’t you?” Mrs McNamara shouted over the spitting rashers. “But ye’ll not leave here without a proper breakfast.”
Minogue backed away toward the door.
“Very good of you.”
He phoned the Squad office number and waited. Murtagh answered with a fluid delivery of the “Investigation-Section-may-I-help-you” which Kilmartin had directed the people-friendly detectives to answer inquiries with. Partnership, PR, the Human Face were some of the terms Kilmartin had relayed back from meetings with senior Gardai. Serving the public. Eilis had a varied repertoire but she sometimes recited the user-friendly incantation. Such was the charge of sarcasm Kilmartin had noted in her tone one day that he directed her to return to her former delivery of “Yes?” or “Murder Squad.”
“Where are you now?” Kilmartin barked.
“I’m in Ennis.”
“Hah. Signs on you’d be in the thick of it, you chancer. Ennis is a hot part of the country today. Did you know that, bucko?”
“You hardly mean the weather.”
“Damn right I don’t. How’s Hoey?”
“He’s gone out to buy sausages. We slept it out. We were up and down the west of Ireland yesterday.”
“I wouldn’t mind being in your boots if that’s all you were doing. Have you come up with anything?”
Kilmartin had heard nothing of Naughton, Minogue believed. He considered his answer but came up with the truth instead.
“I don’t know, James. But something stinks.”
“Ho, ho, mister. I don’t want to know about it. Save your problems for Monsignor Tynan. He’s the one who shanghaied you into this caper, pal.”
Minogue ran his finger along the top of the phone. Hoey opened the front door and stepped in. Minogue nodded at him and mouthed Kilmartin’s name. Hoey blinked, shrugged and headed for the kitchen.
“Well, it’s a mixed bag, really,” Minogue said to Kilmartin. “I’ll tell you when we get back up to town. We’ll be off within the hour.”
“All right. Here, I got a call from that bollicks Hynes. Asking when you were due back in Dublin. Have you something going with him? I hope to God for your sake you don’t. Because if you do…”
“All right.”
“What does ‘all right’ mean?”
“It means, mind your own business, James.”
“Oh, tough talk now, is it? You’re the right hoodlum and you on the phone. Come up here and say it to my face. I dare you.”
“I need the Howards’ address up in Dublin.”
“Take your time, there. Are all your little deals going sour?”
“The address, man. Stop fighting with me.”
“Oh, too busy to talk, are we? Don’t be so stuck-up. I say you’re right to get out of this in one piece. Leave Tynan swing. Leave them to their manoeuvres down in Clare. Stay out of the way. Did you know there’s a big operation on to flush out the Libyan stuff that’s buried around Clare?”
“Hard to miss it,” said Minogue. “The Howards’ address.”
“The Howards. What are they up in Dublin for? I found out, bejases, that the Branch has men by the house out behind Leeson Street. Someone let fly at their house in Ennis, I find out. Did you hear anything about that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you didn’t tell me? Well, Christ, man, keep well out of the way of flying shite.”
“Your advice is well taken, James. Give me the address. Now.”
Kilmartin gave him the telephone number first and told him to okay it with Special Branch before going for a visit.
“All right. I’ll be seeing you.”
“Is that it? You’re not going to sneak off to the airport and head for that sanatorium place, what do you call it, on the sly?”
“Santorini. S-A-N-T-”
“Whoa, boy! Christ, you’re in a royal snit this morning. Just tell me that you’re not keeping something up your sleeve here. Fair and square now, Matt. I scratch your back and all the rest of it, hah?”
Mrs McNamara came from the kitchen with a laden tray. She smiled at Minogue and toed open the door to the dining-room. Hoey followed her and nodded at the Inspector.
“I was talking to the Guard who was first to the house that night. Tom Naughton. He’s retired a few years now, in Limerick.”
“When that young one, the Canadian, was killed?”
“Yes. The fire.”
“What did he have to tell you, so?”
Minogue heard the gunshot again, and he swallowed.
“Well, Shea and myself were talking to him and, well…”
“Well, what? You’re holding out on me. You found something, didn’t you? What about this Naughton fella?”
“Well, he pulled a gun out of a drawer and he shot himself.”
“He what? What did you say?” Kilmartin shouted. “He what?”
“He killed himself. I’ll tell you when I get back-”
“Wait a shagging minute! Don’t just land this on me and-”
Hoey had an appetite. He finished Minogue’s bread and poured more tea.
“You dropped the phone on him,” Hoey murmured again. “He’ll be dug out of you for that.”
Minogue studied his lukewarm tea and nodded.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Minogue.
“I’m going to phone the Howards and set up a meeting. Then I’ll settle up with Mrs Mac here and we’re off up the road to civilisation.”
Hoey saluted him with a full cup of tea and looked out through the window at the foggy shroud over the Clarecastle Road. Minogue returned to the hall and opened his notebook to the Howards’ number.
The embossed wallpaper had had several coats of paint. The Inspector studied the pattern and traced his fingertips over its curlicues and ridges. Mrs Mac kept her house well, he reflected. Parts of the pattern had been flattened and further smoothed by the coats of paint. He could not make out the pattern completely with his eyes but his fingers picked up the pattern as they moved across the wallpaper. He dug a fingernail into a rise in the paper but it failed to pierce it. He stopped and looked down at the phone as if he knew it was about to ring. After a half-minute of staring, the phone still did not ring. Mrs McNamara came out the kitchen door.
Mrs Howard, did you not visit Jane Clark at her house the night of the fire? Did you, upon hearing of the incident with your husband, take it upon yourself to have words with Deborah Jane Clark? Did you not drive away from the pub, go to her cottage and then return to the pub less than a half an hour later? Why did you not tell us that you had left the pub that night?
“I am, thanks. I reversed the charges, like the other call.”
“Great, so.”
Mrs McNamara smiled and entered the dining-room. Hoey stepped into the hallway after her. His look to the Inspector was an appeal to get him out of the clutches of Mrs McNamara.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Hoey. “Hit the road.”
“Sheila Howard is still in Ennis.”
Hoey frowned and blew smoke out the side of his mouth.
“I phoned their place in Dublin, talked to Dan Howard. He told me she decided at the last minute to stay and get the place fixed up. She had to farm out the two horses to be looked after while they’re away.”
“I want to see her on my own,” Minogue said.
Hoey tossed his packet of cigarettes into the air and caught it with a limp palm. “You’re going to ask her where she went during the time she left the pub,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.”
Hoey looked at the frosted glass on the front door and threw the packet into the air again. He grasped it on its descent with a firm hand.
“You’re the boss.”
“Give me an hour, hour and a half. I’ll pick you up in front of here.”
Hoey nodded. He let a mouthful of air balloon his lips before he let it out with a soft pop. “You’re clear on what you want from her, right?”
“How many more times are you going to ask me?”
Hoey pursed his lips and nodded again, as if he were resigned to the score now that he had heard the final whistle.
“So I’ll meet you here outside the gate about eleven. Did you check to see if she’s in the house?”
“The phone’s still out from last night.”