Minogue drove slowly. The fog seemed thicker outside town. Trees and houses materialised and then slipped back into the whiteness as he passed them. Fields were swallowed up a hundred feet beyond the roadside walls.
He could not see the Howards’ house from the gate. He stuffed the Fiat into a spot by the gates and turned off the engine. He was standing outside before he wondered what the hell he was parking there for. He shook his head at his own confusion. Was it a subconscious thing, not wishing to bring the poor Fiat back to the scene of its despoiling in front of the Howards’ house? Embarrassment at driving this wreck, full of uxorious litter? He unlocked the door and prepared to get in but then decided to leave the damn car where it was. Perhaps, he reflected as he locked the door again, it was vestigial caution after seeing the police cars and vans swarming around the gates the other night, wisely left outside until the Fiat had been probed for booby-traps. A walk up the avenue would give him another chance to clear his head anyway. He looked into the window of the Fiat, ran his comb over the top of his head and set off up the avenue.
The trees and bushes seemed to move as they came to him from the fog. The house appeared first as a darker patch, grey, then as the outlines of roof and corner. A Hiace van was parked by the steps.
C. Loughnane
Home Repairs, Restoration and Renovations
We’re Not Happy Until You Are.
He walked past the van. He saw no workmen about but a stepladder was next to the window. Minogue stood and studied the damaged plaster around the window opening. The frame was still attached and there were shards of glass in the flower bed below the window. He remembered the whacks as bullets hit the wall. He looked closer and detected the deeper points to the centres of the scooped-out gouges in the plaster. A breeze caught his coat and moved it across his legs. He shivered. Did Sheila Howard have her own car? The damp air seemed luminous now. Minogue’s eyes ached when he looked up at the sky. What approach would he use? Mrs Howard, I was just mulling over our chat and…
The steps seemed steeper. He grasped the brass doorknocker but the door moved slightly. He let down the knocker and pushed at the door with his fingertips. On the latch to let the workmen come and go? Maybe she had done what she had to do with the bloody horses, or whatever she had stayed for, and she was on the high road to Dublin already. Iijit. He saw his own bulbous face reflected onion-like on the doorknocker as he took his hand away. Better knock. He passed a hand over his hair. Something suggested to him that knocking or calling out here was vulgar, disturbing. He went for the knocker again and he heard a short cry from inside the house. His hand stopped inches from the knocker but his other hand pushed the door a few inches back into the hall. A radio announcer issued news indistinctly from somewhere in the house. An ad jingle started up.
“Go on,” he heard a man’s voice say. Taunting, urgent, whisper and hiss together. The Inspector put one foot on the threshold.
“Do it, can’t you?” said the man. “Like we do. Come on!”
“Leave me be,” Sheila Howard said. “I don’t want that. Not today.”
“Ah, Jesus, don’t be worrying!” The man’s voice rose. “You like it,” said the man, less pleading now. “Don’t play Lady Muck on me! I know how you like it. Tell me now. Go on, tell me!”
Minogue’s feet were leading him across the hall. His mind had gone away. The radio ad ended and a bubbly host announced a top hit from the charts while the music started up. The man’s voice had a warning tone to it now.
“Are you too good for me today, is it?”
Her voice strained and wavered as though she were exerting herself in some chore. “Not now,” she said. “Not here. I can’t.”
“Prince Charming ran away, so what are you fluttering on about?” He sounded breathless now. The words slowed as though he was concentrating on something else.
“He’s having his ride up there. It’s your turn. Come on.”
“Stop it Ciaran! Take the stuff and go. We’ll meet later on.”
“Give me a little souvenir, can’t you?” His voice fell to a low growl: Minogue heard a grunt.
“No,” she said.
Minogue’s stomach was tight now and his shoulders felt as though they were sinking down along his sides. He knew something, and he was losing a battle that he didn’t remember starting to fight. Better say something, he thought, but his hand pushed at the door anyway. The opening door fanned the scents to him and he knew he needn’t fight any longer. Along with those of sweat and the secret, scented clefts, he made out the musky smell. She saw him in the doorway but the man astride her kept pushing his hips into her. She stared at Minogue without fear or surprise. The Inspector himself felt no shock. Although he could not take his eyes from hers, he saw and understood all he needed to. Her blouse open, naked from the waist down with one of her legs lying on the arm of the sofa. Her jeans were on the floor by the coffee table and black knickers lay next to them. The man’s pants still clung to his ankles. He pushed faster, gasping, and began to mutter. Her eyes were flat and dull but they stayed on the Inspector. She began to move under her partner’s thrusts. Doesn’t she care at all, Minogue wondered? The man’s buttocks squeezed as he pushed hard into her.
“Now,” he hissed. “Tell me. You bitch! You fucking bitch!”
He grasped her neck and rose up over her. Her legs moved limply with every thrust he made. They were tanned, Minogue saw. Her eyes grew larger and turned to her partner. One side of her blouse fell away. Her breast shook as he began to buck.
“Tell me now,” he groaned, and looked down toward her belly. “Tell me, fuck you!”
Her eyes darted from her partner back to Minogue. The man’s head turned suddenly. A concentrated, brutal rapture contorted his face. His face was red. He kept his hands on her neck. Dark hair, strands of it hanging over his eyes. Hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. Late twenties. Ciaran. Minogue remembered the face: one of the two men who had lurched into the pub that night he and Crossan were trying to steady their nerves after the shooting.
Embarrassment won out over his curiosity and Minogue stepped back. The ugliness of what the man’s hands were about stopped his retreat and he stared into the eyes again. The man frowned and began to let himself down. Minogue couldn’t take his eyes from her now. With her partner reaching for his pants, she drew her legs together and tugged at her blouse. Her face was flushed and, while her eyes seemed bright, they retained the dull stare. Like a painting he half remembered, Minogue took in Sheila Howard’s body as she rested on one elbow, her brown legs one over the other.
The words of the tune on the radio, a familiar ballad, kept coming into his thoughts. Without taking his eyes from hers, Minogue could make out the patch of dark hair that stopped half-way to her navel. Some distant disappointment in her look began to work on the Inspector and he began to feel the dismay and desire flood into him. Her body seemed carelessly thrown there, as if it were something she had little use for anymore. But that couldn’t be, he realised. Her body did not fit with this man’s lust. A slob: how could she? No coy or whorish scorn in her expression. Unconcerned, as if all had been lost some time ago and there was no place to begin trying to explain. How could she? How could anyone, you gobshite? You know people and what they can do. Are you blind or just stupid? Romance. Do you think people are angels? Wishing your life away. Don’t you know anything?
The Inspector’s words came out in a whisper. “I’ll wait.”
The radio went to ads again. Sheila Howard’s partner had now turned his back. He was working his trousers up. Ciaran somebody. The air in the room was suddenly overpowering: pungent bleachy mix of genitals, the cheesy stench of the man’s socks, his cigarette smell. A picture of him pushing into her flashed into Minogue’s mind again. For the first time, he felt angry. Is this what she wanted? You know she did. You know it. “We can meet later on.” Didn’t you hear her? She doesn’t care. The man she had called Ciaran glared at Minogue and flicked his hair back from over his eyes. His sleeve brushed Minogue’s as he walked by, hopping slightly to right the sit of his trousers. Minogue smelled sour sweat from his clothes as he passed.
“Well,” came the lilting sarcasm in a man’s voice from the hall.
“It’s all right,” Ciaran grunted.
Minogue headed out after him.
“Go back, can’t you, go back,” Ciaran hissed, and waved his hands.
“You came up short, did you?” the voice taunted. “Here, maybe I should have a go-”
“Fuckin’ move!” Minogue heard Ciaran reply.
The Inspector reached the doorway and saw him push another man back toward the kitchen. The drinking pal from the night before at the pub, he noted. A stricken look came into the second man’s face and his bloodshot eyes bulged. Minogue’s eye was drawn to the stud in the man’s earlobe. He smelled whiskey-breath now.
“Who the fu… How did he…?” and his mouth stayed open.
They know me, thought Minogue. Sheila Howard’s interrupted lover, whom Minogue wanted to believe was not her proper lover, at least not in the way he imagined lovers, pushed the other man again.
“Cause you were pissing around, drinking in the fucking kitchen,” he whispered fiercely. The man’s eyes were still on Minogue. “So go and do your fucking job!”
The Inspector decided to wait on the steps outside. He wanted to take this Ciaran aside and give him a going-over. At the same time he knew how absurd that was. As Minogue turned, the man with the earring stumbled and fell backwards. He swore as he fell, landed first on his backside and then turned on his forearm to stop himself rolling back feet-up.
“Stop fucking pushing,” he grunted as he came to rest. Minogue gave him a contemptuous glance and the man started to get up.
The gun clattered onto the floor from under his jacket. It lay there, still, while the three men looked at it. Minogue held his breath and looked from the gun up to Ciaran and then to the other man. For several seconds, the Inspector could not get beyond bewilderment. Were these two lesser species of Special Branch assigned to guard Mrs Howard? He imagined tumbrels clicking into place somewhere in the back of his addled mind. His heart seemed to be soaring into his throat. He heard a soft slap of elastic clicking over the sound of an ad for fertiliser. Sheila Howard putting her knickers on again, a part of his mind registered.
“Look what you’ve gone and done now, you fuck-” said the one with the ear-ring.
“Are you Branch-” Minogue started to ask.
Ciaran dropped to the floor. In one smooth movement, he had the pistol up and the barrel of the automatic drawn back.
“It’s done now, so shut up,” he said. The panic on the man’s face had frozen Minogue’s thoughts.
“You stupid, lazy fucking-” Ciaran began.
“I didn’t hear him!” shouted the one with the ear-ring. Minogue continued to stare at him. His entire face was red now and his moustache seemed to quiver. Locks of curly hair stood out over his ears.
“You with the stupid radio on-”
“He didn’t drive up! I woulda heard him!” He turned to Minogue. “You walked or something, didn’t you?”
Ciaran waved the gun from side to side at Minogue and moved to the foot of the stairs. Minogue felt the door near him and his body almost leaned toward it.
“See!” cried the other. “He’s after sneaking up! Close the fucking door! There’s probably a mob of them around the house! Jesus! It’s a fucking trap, Ciaran!! We’ve been set up!!”
Ciaran’s eyes turned frantic and his fingers flexing and grasping the grip of the automatic took Minogue’s thoughts. The Inspector felt his legs begin to quiver. Were they both drunk? How could he buy time?
“It’s a fucking set-up! They knew all along!”
All along? They knew who he was? How?
“Did you?” asked Ciaran in a soft voice. The other man closed the hall door.
Minogue’s instincts had already begun to size up the pair. Ciaran with the gun didn’t look drunk. He acted with a natural authority. The one with the ear-ring had been drinking, hence an unknown. Better Ciaran to have the gun? What could he play on, appeal to? They knew he was a Guard. He had seen their faces. If he tried to fool them into believing there really were Guards surrounding the house… Sheila Howard stood in the doorway to the living-room. Minogue lost track of his calculations and thoughts. He felt himself falling into panic. He looked into Ciaran’s eyes.
“Well, did you?” said Ciaran.
Minogue sensed with a dull, awful certainty that this Ciaran was the most dangerous. Behind the calm he felt his rage. When this fella acted, there’d be no warning, he knew. The details in the hall pressed in on Minogue. Furniture polish, the picture frames, the stupid music from a stupid DJ in Dublin who couldn’t imagine Minogue’s terror here.
“There is! We’re fucked!” hissed the other. “I’m telling you! It was this bastard-!”
He threw a sudden punch at Minogue. The Inspector tried to dodge it but the blow glanced off his cheek. He tottered to the wall off-balance, bumping against Ciaran on the way. The shock woke something in him and he came back from the wall in a crouch, his head still roaring from the impact.
“Stop it,” he heard Sheila Howard shouting. “Don’t, don’t!”
Minogue took Ciaran down sideways and chopped at him with his elbow as it met his stomach. The gun fell to the floor and sour breath whooshed out over Minogue’s face. He rolled over the downed Ciaran and looked around the floor for the gun.
“Don’t!” Sheila Howard shrieked.
Minogue tried to claw himself up but stopped when he saw the gun pointing directly into his eye, the wide-eyed face behind it and the stud glittering to the side of his head. Ciaran began to wriggle beside him and Minogue looked down. As he did, he heard Sheila Howard’s shriek again. The hall turned white and disappeared into the glare. In the whiteness and pain and noise, he felt himself falling. Terror and anger overwhelmed him. Kathleen, he thought, I shouldn’t have.
Jiggling, dull and constant noise, squeaks. Someone spoke far away. Pain-awful pain he could not endure. His cheek was pressed down on a rag smelling of paint. If things would only stop. He was on his chest. He felt the van’s tyres clip the innumerable cuts in the tarred road, slap the bigger holes and then bounce over the corrugated bumps the moving bog had pressed up from below.
Alive, he thought. He turned his head slightly and sent flashes of pain across his eyes. Minogue groaned. The van bobbed and rose to the top of its springs before it dropped back, swaying and shuddering.
“Slow down,” said a man’s voice. “We’ve enough on our plate. Don’t dump us all in the ditch.” The van slowed and Minogue opened his eyes again. Sheila Howard was leaning against a wheel-well, looking down at him. Her expression told him nothing.
“Your man’s back with us,” said a voice from the front.
Minogue recognised Ciaran’s voice now. The van braked hard then, and Minogue slid forward. Sheila Howard fell over and rolled into the back of the bench seat. Minogue yelped as pain shot through his neck. Her hand came to rest inches from his face. The van leaned hard to one side. Minogue felt the tyres dig into the tar macadam. He heard the start of the ripping scratch that presaged a skid proper and braced himself, but the van righted itself with a sudden bob. Minogue rolled over and gritted his teeth against the flashes of pain.
“Jesus Christ!” Ciaran shouted. “Can you do nothing right today? Are you trying to fucking kill us?”
Minogue’s eyes seemed to swell. The van began to climb and Minogue opened his eyelids slightly. The grey shapes of boulders slid back into the fog in the wake of the van. Minogue opened his eyelids a little more. The side of his face on which he had been lying still felt numb. He held the back of his neck and pushed up on one elbow.
“Hey!”
Minogue looked up. Ciaran was leaning over the seat-back.
“Lie down.”
The pain was now like a weight on his neck and shoulders. Sheila Howard had settled back against the wheel-well but she was looking out the back window of the van. Ciaran still had his arm over the seat.
“Who else from your mob are here in Ennis?” Ciaran asked.
Minogue focussed on him with difficulty. He began to say something but nothing came out. He tried to swallow.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he managed to croak. Ciaran’s eyes narrowed.
“Your mob,” he said, louder. “Your pals. Guards. Whatever outfit you belong to. Undercover mob.”
Minogue wondered if he dared lift his arm to look at his watch. What would Hoey think when he didn’t show?
“Are you deaf?” shouted the driver. That one, Minogue thought, as he heard the tone of a braggart keen to look tough, the one who had been drinking in the kitchen while his pal and Sheila Howard were…
“I don’t have a mob. I’m down on a holiday.”
“Liar,” said the driver. “This is your second trip. And you have another fella with you. The one with the black eyes.”
“What were you snooping around for?” Ciaran resumed. “What are you looking for?”
Minogue said nothing. The pain dulled his vision but he stared at Sheila Howard. He thought of her straddled on the sofa, this Ciaran rising and falling over her.
“You’re an undercover type,” said Ciaran. “Who’s your boss?”
“I’m me own boss.”
Ciaran sprang up, his knees on the seat, and let his arms down over the back of the seat. Minogue looked over at him. The pistol dangled from his hand but the Inspector saw the finger on the guard.
“Don’t play the fucking smart-arse with me,” Ciaran growled and waved the gun. “Who sent you? What do you know about us?”
Us, Minogue thought. He tried to calculate what he should say.
“He’s down from Dublin-” Sheila Howard said.
“Jesus, we know that.” Ciaran waved the gun again. “The Murder Squad. That’s a cover for something. What’re you really here for?”
These two had strolled into Considine’s pub after he and Crossan had been there ten minutes. Did Crossan…? Minogue’s thoughts were snapped away by fear then. For several moments his body merely registered the squeaks and the tyres’ whirr as the van travelled over the Burren road. Across his fogged mind images flared and disappeared back into his confusion: Had Crossan known?
“Ah, to hell with it,” said Ciaran. The van jiggled on a series of bumps. Ciaran pressed the pistol against the seat-back to steady himself.
“Look. It’s in your own interest…” He stopped, still searching for something in Minogue’s eyes.
“Fuck it,” he snapped. His face seemed to close up. “It’s your own look-out if you want to be an iijit.”
Minogue watched as Ciaran’s eyes went to Sheila Howard. She looked back at him and then returned to the window, her head and upper body swaying as the van took the turns. Minogue believed Ciaran had wanted some sign from her. He moved one hand down the wrist of the other. His watch was gone. Its loss shocked him and surprised him, bringing back the fear. There was something expert about taking his watch, he thought. Planning. He thought of making a break for the door and tumbling out onto the road, hoping for the best. Sit up a little and wait until they passed a house so that Ciaran would hesitate to use a gun. Forget the fact that houses were few and far between here. Minogue moved an elbow under himself and prepared to push his body up in stages. Just then the van slowed and left the tarred road. It wallowed bumpily and slowed as the driver eased it up a laneway. Bushes scraped along the panels once. The van turned sharply and stopped.
“Stay down on the floor,” said Ciaran. The driver switched off the engine. Minogue’s confusion was burned away. Terror took its place. The insistent knowledge came back still stronger. Knowing what he knew, they would not let him go.
Hoey closed the newspaper and looked at the man behind the counter of Hogan’s newsagents. Should he tell him? He felt like laughing, it was so bloody ridiculous. Wait until he showed it to Minogue. He looked at his watch. A half an hour yet.
“That’s a wicked fog. You wouldn’t want to be out on the roads this morning, by God.”
He had gone to see Out of Africa with Aine and found the landscape behind Meryl Streep’s and Robert Redford’s faces contrary to what he had imagined Africa was like. Did you think it was all monkeys swinging, like in the zoo, she had gibed. Children with swollen bellies swaying in front of the camera, he had thought. People always unfortunate, winds whipping sandstorms over what had been grass, gaunt scarecrows carrying stick-limbed babies in the heat and dust. But that wasn’t a true picture, Aine had told him. You mean millions are not dying? No: the culture, the ruin that white people had brought to Africa. Slavery, colonialism, apartheid. Didn’t he know that our ancestor was probably an African, Eve?
“But sure, it’ll probably clear off when we get a breeze.”
Aine had gotten her last inoculation that afternoon, he remembered. She had showed him the needle mark: the cholera can be bad, she had said. There had better not be any Robert Redford types hanging around out there now, with or without the clap. The images from the picture receded as the memory of their row that same evening came to him. He felt a leakage of something cold into his chest and stomach. He didn’t want to think about it but he couldn’t help it.
If you’d only wait and give me time, I could get a leave and go with you. You’re joking me, you haven’t even been out of Ireland on a holiday, Shea. And, anyway, what could you do out there? You’re a Guard. They want teachers and what-have-you, not more men in uniform. I could visit. I’ll write and let you know, Shea. Maybe I need to be on my own for a while, a change of scene. For what? That’s none of your business in actual fact. I need to stretch me legs and do new things. There’s more to me than being a teacher, you know. There’s more to me than being a cop, too. You’ve changed, Shea. You really have. Over the last two or three years. I haven’t changed enough for you, by the sound of things. Don’t get like that, you’re like a spoiled child. I’m the way I am, I’ve always been different and you knew that. You never complained about that before. You used to say you liked that even. Look, Shea, let’s not fight. We’re two grown people. Things change, that’s all I’m saying.
Hoey opened the paper again. It was still there.
“Are you down from Dublin?”
Hoey was reading today’s copy of the Irish Independent. On page four, the features page, was a full-page article on Irish people working for charity organisations in Africa. Aine, her arms around two black kids smiling shyly, was herself grinning back into the camera. “Aine Healey, a teacher on leave from her job in Dublin, has made fast friends with these two youngsters in rural Zimbabwe.”
Hoey looked up from the paper. “How much is the Indo?”
Mr Hogan looked over the rim of his glasses at Hoey.
“Same price as in Dublin. Have you it all read?”
“It was the one page I was looking over again,” said Hoey. He laid a pound coin next to Hogan’s cup of tea. “See her? I know her.”
Hogan squinted at the picture. “Africa, begob. She’s helping them out in Africa. That’s great.” He looked up to Hoey and smiled.
“That’s the Irish for you. Where there’s trouble and famine, that’s where we go. We had it so bad ourselves with the Great Hunger, we’d never walk away from people in need. It’s in the genes, man. It’s the way we are-that’s what I say.”
Hoey took his change and stumbled back out into the shrouded town of Ennis. He stopped in a doorway and read it again. “They need us and they’re terrific kids. They really want to be in school… Yes, it took time to adjust but I fell in love with the people. They really need us… They have taught me so much… Oh, sure, I miss Ireland but not as much as I…”
Hoey’s eyes began to sting. He stuffed the paper under his arm and searched his pocket for hankies. His chest began to heave and he couldn’t stop it. He had no hankies but he wouldn’t go back into the shop in this state. Were the pubs open? Fuck! His shoulder scraped the wall as he fingered his eyes. He began to look at the shop-fronts, hoping to see a pub. He stepped out into the street to see better. The car grew out of the fog behind him. Hoey heard the squeak of brakes and looked around. The antennae were still waving as it started up again. Hoey looked down into the car. The face was familiar. Cuddy rolled down the window.
“Howarya, there,” he said. “Minogue’s pal, aren’t you? Wouldn’t mistake you for anyone else with the eyes there.”
Hoey registered the attempt at humour with a nod.
“Are you lost?” Cuddy asked. The squad car began to move off slowly.
“No,” said Hoey. “No, I’m not really.”
“Tell Minogue I was asking for him,” said Cuddy.
“All right, now,” came Ciaran’s voice from the open door. Minogue elbowed up and squinted against the light in the doorway. Though overcast now, the light seemed intense. The fog had retired further. He put up a hand to shield his eyes. Pain swept up to a knot behind his eyes.
“Out you come,” said Ciaran. The doorway framed Ciaran and Sheila Howard. Behind them in the fog loomed scraggy evergreens. Like so many cottages in west Clare, it was secreted in a sheltering grove of trees and bushes. Overgrown grasses lay in dense, saturated clumps by the door. Minogue looked from the gun to Ciaran’s face.
“Hurry up!”
Minogue stood dizzily on an overgrown laneway. Another surge reached the back of his head and he wondered if he might fall over. Sheila Howard had walked around to the front of the van and she stood there looking away. He took a step forward and felt the world tilting. Builder’s rubble, loose stones and disassembled scaffolding lay in heaps next to the house. Ciaran grabbed Minogue’s collar and pushed him forward. Minogue fought off the urge to turn or run. He hadn’t a clue where they were. He guessed afternoon but he could not make out where the sun was. His eyes hurt. Run for it? He faked a stumble and fell to the ground. Ciaran stood over him, pointing the pistol.
“No funny moves,” he said. He took a step back and motioned Minogue to get up. Minogue’s mind tried to work on his location again: up the Coast Road, near Lisdoon? Above Fanore?
“Get up!”
The driver came around the side of the van, straining with the weight of a box he was carrying. Seeing Minogue half up, he stopped and stared. The box slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the laneway. The driver swore and hopped about, his hands on one knee. Ciaran turned his head.
“Just leave it!” he shouted. “Leave it until we’re ready.” He turned to Minogue who was on one knee now. “And you, get up!”
A new slate roof had been put on the house and an extension had been added to the side. The stone walls had been carefully mortared and fitted to meet with the older building. Ciaran shoved Minogue toward the door.
“In the door there.”
Dread paralysed Minogue. The doorway was a black hole. The horror of being entombed rooted him to the spot. Ciaran grasped his collar again and pushed. Minogue raised his hand to prevent himself from falling. His hand slapped onto the door before he braced himself against the jamb.
“Get in the fucking door,” Ciaran growled, and pushed again. Better to fight, to run. Ciaran jabbed the gun hard under Minogue’s ribs, driving him headlong into the dim interior.
Was it four o’clock? Five? The darkness was unnerving him more and more. The boards covering the small window had been secured with crosspieces jammed and nailed into the old frames. He had heard some kind of cloth being thrown down on the outside of the door. Once he almost cried out, when the image of the house being set on fire wouldn’t go away. He strained for minutes on end to smell any smoke. He had tried to persuade himself-and it had mostly worked-that the cloth was to keep any light from coming in under the door. Still, he could not banish the image which flickered in his mind and detonated the panic in his chest without warning: flames raging through the house, swallowing it, him trapped here as the burning roof came down. Stop imagining. Think. Would Hoey have alerted Kilmartin?
His body seemed to be soaking up cold from the cement floor. He felt it taking over his limbs, working at the flesh around his waist. He had tried to get out to pee but nothing had come of it. Pee in the corner, he had been told through the door. There had been coming and going, he knew, because he had heard the scrape of a piece of wood which had slipped under the front door when he had entered the house. He shivered again and the spasm ran right up to his chin, making his teeth chatter. His nostrils had become inured to the damp odour of the cement and dust. He was not hungry but he wanted something-a cigarette, even. He drew up his knees again. Something about Ciaran especially chilled him. Along with the anger there was some weariness or resignation that showed in his eyes. Did Ciaran believe that he couldn’t let him walk? Ciaran and whatever-his-name-Finbarr. Were they IRA or some splinter group? And how did Sheila Howard get herself mixed up with these two? Her legs, he thought, her empty eyes on his. The same woman he had seen and watched in the dining-room of the Old Ground, in her home. Crossan? Minogue stared into the darkness and whispered the name aloud.
Hoey wheeled around and glared at Crossan. The two men stood at the foot of the steps leading up to the front door of the Howards’. Hoey had been down to Minogue’s car. No keys, locked. No clue as to where Minogue might be. At least there were no bloodstains. He and Crossan had been through the yard, into the coach-house and sheds, out into the fields. Sheila Howard’s car was in the garage. Nothing else. He glared at the lawyer.
“This window,” said Hoey. “Come on, give me a leg up.”
“Aren’t you over-reacting again?”
In lieu of an answer, Hoey sprang up on the lawyer’s cupped hands. Crossan grunted and his shoes sank deeper into the mud as Hoey stood upright. Hoey’s feet moved up to the lawyer’s shoulders.
“‘Guard tramples on well-respected barrister en route to criminal offence,’” Crossan whispered as he grimaced. Hoey tapped in the remaining pieces of glass from the shattered frame.
“Accessories are supposed to help,” said Hoey. “So shut up.”
“Break and enter,” wheezed Crossan beneath him. “I’m a goner now, to be sure.”
Hoey ground his heels into Crossan’s meagre shoulders as he toed up and scrambled in the window. He was satisfied with the grunt of pain the barrister issued. He stood in the room and surveyed the floor by his feet first.
“What’s the story, then?” Crossan called out.
“Wait and I’ll open the front door.”
Hoey headed for the hall and opened the hall door. Crossan trudged up the steps, rubbing at his shoulders. Hoey spotted the phone and lifted it.
“Shite, it’s still not fixed,” he said, and slammed it down.
“At least someone’s made a start on fixing up the place,” said Crossan.
He began using his nails to get mud from his coat. Hoey walked up and down the hall, checking the kitchen and dining-room.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it’d be,” Crossan murmured.
“What isn’t?”
“The damage. The shooting. If you’d been here, you’d have thought the place was coming down around your ears.”
Hoey sprang up the stairs, calling out the Inspector’s name. Crossan heard him opening doors and swearing. Then Hoey came down the stairs fast. He stopped on the last step, frowning at the floor.
“They might have gone somewhere for a chat,” Crossan tried. Hoey snapped his head up and eyed the barrister. Instead of the retort the lawyer expected, Hoey skipped down the steps onto the pebbled driveway and began walking fast down the avenue.
He had been thinking of Eamonn. Black head of hair the day he was born, eyelids tight over his eyes. The small coffin. Beyond knowing that Eamonn had been a baby, he could not remember his son’s face. The three photos they had of him were not clear: one of Kathleen standing by the crib, the baby cradled but his face invisible; Eamonn asleep in the pram in the back garden, long before the shrubs and trees had grown there; Minogue’s mother holding and displaying her grandson to the camera two days before Eamonn had died. Countless times he had scrutinised the photographs asking himself if there was anything different about the child that he should have been alert to. Something different from the start, Kathleen had maintained over the years after Iseult was born-that bold, spoiled, raucous miracle.
Eamonn’s face under the teddy bear: his first thought, as the room exploded around him, the terror and awareness of death in the room changing everything, had been that Eamonn had suffocated. The quiet in the house, dawn, the stillness that had brought him from bed and across the hall, knowing something was amiss. Though the infant’s hands were cold, Minogue believed that Eamonn had died just before dawn. He recalled wanting his own death for relief from the pain.
He swung his hands over his head and clenched his eyes tight. There must be a way out of this. He stopped stretching: a car outside? He put his ear to the wall. Couldn’t tell. He scraped his fingertips hard over his face then but his mind had allowed the words out already-kidnap, hostage. He stopped and stared into the darkness: were they going to kill him? The darkness, the cold, all immediate things fell away. To his surprise, he did not free-fall into panic. His thoughts became clear instead. He began to go through the possibilities. They could hold him until they were safe away. But were they well enough in with whatever groups they belonged to to be handed passports, money and plane tickets? Not likely. These were local men and, if they were heart-and-soul IRA or affiliates, they’d want to be on home ground, not hanging around shopping malls in Cleveland or Cologne waiting five years for things to die down.
Kill him? No: they’d try to deal their way out. But they’d get seven to ten for possession of the guns alone. Add to that kidnapping, assault. He traced the lump and the split skin on his head again. His nausea had gone and, except for any sudden move of his head, the ache was manageable. He pushed his knuckles into his eyesockets and tried to think again. Make some strategy or some fall-back position. Lie, talk-Over the water came the breeze, rippling the surface, wave and trough alike. The sea-skin stretched, swelled again and drew toward the rocks. Still it seemed to move nowhere. Sea-wrack drifted, sank and rose again. The fish searched below and then fled among the rocks. There they were, the shapes moving so fast, turning, moiling, streaming cascades of bubbles behind, revolving in rapture. As the image faded, he rose slowly to his feet. Still he couldn’t focus on a plan. Where did she fit? Why would she- Something had been going on all around him, Minogue knew, and he had finally stumbled in, clumsy and stupid. He had let his instincts carry him and had even dragged Hoey along. And, in the end, none of this mattered. All past and beyond reach now. No going back. The best of intentions-what did they matter anymore?
An electric jolt ran up his whole body when he heard the steps. They were coming for him. Suddenly frantic, he tried to put words together for argument. Where the hell was Hoey? Someone was working at the lock. He backed away into a corner. Stand firm anyway, he thought. Run at the door? If there was any chance at all.
The light blinded him. Could it be just those two lousy light bulbs? He squinted though his eyelashes. A flashlight beam ran over his face and chest. He wanted to say something.
“Just fucking well do it, Shea!” Kilmartin roared. “Don’t start up on that again or I’ll walk on you.”
“Well, I can’t just sit here like an iijit for a few hours-”
“You can do it and you’re going to do it because I’m shagging ordering you to do it! Do not leave the station. Do you hear me?”
Hoey bit back his reply. It wouldn’t help Minogue for him to fuck Kilmartin from a height on the phone here. The Killer could work things over the phone for now, get the personnel and the search started right away.
“Are you listening?” Kilmartin asked again.
“Yeah.”
“You last saw him at ten, right? And his car is still parked out at the house, the Howards’ place.”
“So is the woman’s, Mrs Howard. She has a Renault parked in a garage in the yard.”
“Where’s this fuckin’ lawman? Crosbie.”
“Crossan. He’s here.”
“If Matty has been diddled in any way by this little shite Crosbie, so help me, I’ll fuckin’ burst him. Crosbie, Crossan, whatever the hell his name is. You tell him that, do you hear?”
Hoey surveyed the listless barrister across the table.
“Okay.”
“Is Russell there yet?”
“Haven’t seen him come in.” Hoey was suddenly weary. “Let me ask. He might have come in and I didn’t notice.”
He put his palm over the receiver and asked Ahearne. The Sergeant shook his head, looked at his watch, blinked and returned to chewing the inside of his upper lip.
“No. Not yet.”
“Keep this line open. Sit by the phone. Anyone puts their hand near it, give ’em a puck in the snot. Hard. I’ll phone the Branch again.”
While he waited, Hoey returned to scraping the remains of a round sticker from a desktop in Ennis police station. Drops of sweat itched in his armpits and on his forehead. He could be back in five minutes from a pub. He scraped harder, oblivious to the sticky detritus collecting under his nails. Guards continued to come and go in the station. Hoey and Crossan had been called in but once to detail what Minogue and they had been doing. Hoey had noted the Emergency Response Unit men checking their pistols in the hallway.
Ahearne was standing by the table, holding a mug.
“No,” said Hoey. “Thanks.”
Ahearne laid down the mug, glanced from Hoey to Crossan and sat down slowly with a sigh. Two Guards in plainclothes walked in from the yard and stopped by Ahearne.
“Within the half-hour,” Ahearne said to them. The two trudged off to the main office.
“Have you picked anyone up yet?” Hoey asked.
Ahearne shook his head. Hoey checked his watch. Kilmartin had told Hoey that he’d be at Ennis Garda station within the hour.
“There’s always the chance it might turn out to be a false alarm,” Crossan said.
“Shut up,” said Hoey.
Crossan considered retaliating but he found that Ahearne was staring at him. The Sergeant’s usual expression of detached politeness had been replaced by a hard, empty look. Hoey had relayed Kilmartin’s threat to Crossan verbatim, unalloyed by sympathy or parody. Hoey had then told him that what Kilmartin might leave intact of him, he, Hoey, a man of modest mien who had given the barrister the appearance of being a cautious, repressed man, at best indifferent to him, would take apart.
“They came back to take the Howards and your man happened to be there at exactly the wrong time,” said Ahearne.
Hoey maintained his stare at the window.
“They probably wanted Dan,” Ahearne tried again. “Bold and brazen of ’em to come back the next day to do it, I say. Exactly the last time and place anyone’d expect to try and lift Dan-”
“What for?” said Crossan.
Ahearne shrugged. “Well, I’m not up on that. But they’d want to drive some kind of a deal, I imagine.”
“How did they know that Mrs Howard was staying put in the house?” Hoey asked. “They’d hardly expect the Howards to stay put in the house after the shooting.”
“And a deal for what?” Crossan probed further.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Ahearne quickly, as though fending off an accusation. “That’s what we’re waiting to hear, seems to me.”
Hoey turned from the window and looked at Ahearne for a moment.
“Someone had started repairs to the windows anyway,” said Aheame. “They’re still trying to reach Dan Howard in Dublin to get the name of whoever was hired to fix the place. Maybe they saw something.”
Kilmartin came through the doorway, followed by Russell. Hoey stepped smartly to the side of the door and suffered Kilmartin’s sharp, interrogative stare for several moments. Kilmartin nodded at Ahearne who stood. He spoke in a low voice.
“Are you Crosbie?”
The barrister rose slowly from his chair. Russell stood next to Kilmartin and stared at Crossan too.
“You, mister”-Kilmartin jabbed a finger in the air separating him from the lawyer-“you had better have some big, fat rabbits in your hat. Because, by Christ, we’re letting everything off the leash here. If and we can’t find rabbits to run down, we’ll eat anything that looks like a fuckin’ weasel!”
Crossan studied the bulk of James Kilmartin, recently disgorged from a helicopter onto the pad at Ennis County Hospital.
“Tell me now,” said the barrister, “did you gallop all the way down from Dublin in a pack or on your own?”
Kilmartin’s attention seemed to be suddenly taken up with a particle of undigested food caught on the tip of his tongue. His tongue scraped his teeth several times as if to flush out any more pieces of food still hiding in his dentures. When he spoke, it was in the gentle and intimate tone the Chief Inspector reserved for his better threats.
“Listen, head-the-ball. If and you don’t co-operate 200 per cent with us here”-the Chief Inspector paused and took a piece of something from his tongue with his thumbnail; he looked down his nose at it as though puzzled at its provenance, flicked it away and looked back into Crossan’s glazed, bulging eyes-“I’ll personally give you such a fucking belt that they’ll stop you for speeding above in Portlaoise.”
Kilmartin turned on his heel and headed for Russell’s office. Russell pursed his lips and looked out bleakly under his corrugated brow at Crossan.
“That’s merely a figure of speech, Mr Crossan,” he murmured, and followed Kilmartin.
The Chief Inspector couldn’t or wouldn’t sit. Russell closed the door behind him and watched Kilmartin as he stood by the window rolling on the balls of his feet.
“Minogue has a mouth on him,” said Russell.
Kilmartin’s reply came in a restrained monotone. “Well I know it, Tom. And I told him often enough. Sure, don’t I have to put up with it every day myself?”
“Didn’t help him much here, I can tell you. Matter of fact, I tore into him for it.”
Kilmartin nearly lost it then.
“I know, Tom, I know,” he said as he drew in a breath. “He has that knack. Definitely, yes, I’d have to agree with you 100 per cent on that.”
“Is that a job requirement for your mob or that class of thing?”
Kilmartin’s teeth were set tight.
“He’s Clare, Tom,” murmured the Chief Inspector. “He came by the sharp tongue honest enough.”
Russell weighed Kilmartin’s anger before he looked away to his desk.
“Well, he’s after pissing in the wrong pot today, Jim.”
Kilmartin whirled around and strode to the door.
“Wait until we have all the units-”
“I can’t fucking wait,” Kilmartin hissed. He slapped the door with the heel of his hand. “He’s out there somewhere. I was never a man to sit around like a dog by the fire.”
Russell hurried out after him. Kilmartin waved at Hoey.
“Drive us, D.J.,” Russell called out to Ahearne. “We can work from the car.”