The Inspector began to feel claustrophobic. Drinkers continued to pour into the pub. They stood in front of the table where Minogue, Kilmartin and their wives sat, blocking them in. This idea of Kathleen’s seemed to be backfiring. Maybe he should ease off on the drink.
“How and when did this dump ever get to be so popular?” Kilmartin shouted over the din. “A glorified shebeen. They should do it up nice.”
Kathleen hadn’t slept well for over a week. She had planned this evening out in cahoots with Jim Kilmartin, Minogue guessed. On one of her afternoon visits to her husband in the hospital, she had brought up the topic of putting the house up for sale. Make a fresh start, her logic ran. Though Minogue hadn’t yet been able to say what he believed he should, she had read his expression. For over an hour afterwards, he recalled, she argued aloud with herself while he listened. Though dopey most of the time, he still marvelled that she had read his mind. She had finally declared that it would be good sense to put it off for a year.
A fiddle player tested bow and strings somewhere in the ruck between the foursome and the bar. Minogue was looking up at the men’s pony-tails, the women’s tube skirts. Perfume was thick and sweet in the smoky air. Kilmartin’s wife, Maura, answered her husband’s question.
“There’s a crowd of rock stars and film people living up around here, that’s why. Oh, look! Look, Kathleen! That’s him! Your man, what’s-his-name! Joey Mad-Again. Joey Madigan!”
“They’re brilliant!” said Kathleen.
To Minogue, inspired by two Jamesons, it appeared that she and Maura Kilmartin were both levitating. He looked at them crouched, hovering over their seats. Their heads moving from side to side reminded him of hens prospecting for remnants of grain in a farmyard. Invisible in the crowd, a fiddler played two bars of “The Rakes of Mallow.” The shouting and laughter dropped to a murmur. A tall, unshaven man turned around to find a spot to place his empty glass. Kathleen waved and caught his eye. Joey Madigan, stage-names Joey Mad and Joey Mad-Again, lead singer, founder and guitarist with the hit rock/traditional/folk group Social Welfare, looked around the table and raised his eyebrows.
“Howiya, Joe!” Maura called out.
“Howiya yourself,” he called back.
By the way this Joe wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Minogue pegged him for a man who could drink a lot and had done so tonight. He thought of Hoey. His colleague had taken three weeks’ sick leave. Minogue had last seen Hoey the day before yesterday. Hoey had attended four AA meetings, was dry and looked relaxed. He told Minogue that he was getting his inoculations and booking a flight through to Harare. Hoey assured him several times that it wasn’t a joke. Kilmartin believed Hoey, but continued to treat it as a joke.
“Heard you on the radio, Joe!” Kathleen said. “Will you sing? Will you?”
Since when was Kathleen so bold, her husband wondered. And that look on her face. Radiant. An adoring fan? Kilmartin was looking stonily at this recent star on the Irish music scene.
“Go on, can’t you?” Maura Kilmartin joined in. Her husband’s face set harder as he stared at Joe Mad-Again.
“Give us ‘Dublin Town,’ Joey. Go on, do,” Kathleen pleaded.
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Ah, go on, can’t you?” said Minogue. Kilmartin looked over to his friend in disbelief.
Now he remembered the group. This hit of last summer had launched the group properly. “Dublin Town” was full to the brim of the city’s mocking irony. Madigan had a singular talent for belting the lyrics out with angry, accusatory snarls. Joey Mad seemed to sense Kilmartin’s discomfort. The Chief Inspector had folded his arms and was studying the empty glasses on the table now. Finally, he glared up.
“Ah, go on, do,” he growled, and put on a flinty smile. “For your man here with the long face. It’s his first day out in a long time. He’s a fan of the Dublin crowd.”
Joey Mad tapped a shoulder in the crowd. Kathleen Minogue elbowed Kilmartin in the ribs.
“Will you look?” said Kathleen. “It’s the other one! The one who used to play with The Goners-Gabby Mac!”
She turned bright, excited eyes on Minogue. For the first time in nearly two weeks, Minogue felt the weight slip a little. Last night was the first night he had slept more than four hours since returning from Clare.
“He looks like a goner, all right,” Kilmartin observed. “The narrowback. Get a real job, pal.”
Kathleen turned to Maura Kilmartin and Minogue saw his wife’s hand splayed down on Maura’s forearm.
“God, Maura, it’s great! He’s going to do it! Fab, isn’t it?”
A fiddle launched into a rousing intro. It was soon joined by a guitar and the hollow thuds of a bodhran. Maura and Kathleen were standing up now, trying to see into the crowd.
“Sit down, can’t ye?” Kilmartin hissed.
The crowd seemed to heave with the music as Joey Mad began to howl out the words.
We sat in Bewleys Restaurant there,
We talked and laughed without a care.
“You know, says she, the time just flies
I thought how small talk always lies.
Joey Mad began to shout out the chorus. Kilmartin rolled his eyes.
Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,
But I’m a desperate man.
The Chief Inspector leaned in and shouted into Minogue’s ear. “At least he got that last part right. It is fucking desperate!” Minogue looked at Kathleen and Maura. They were swaying from side to side in their seats, clapping gently, smiling. The whole pub seemed to be lurching somewhere with the music. He felt his heart was beating in an empty space. Other voices joined in louder as Joey Mad bit into another verse. Maybe he’d be better off outside, away from the crush and the racket.
What were we then, sixteen or so?
Why did you leave, I’d like to know?
Escape, run, travel-I began.
But you’re back, says she, each chance you can.
Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,
But I’m a desperate man.
Someone whooped. Kilmartin stood and waded into the crowd. Kathleen, swaying, caught Minogue’s eye and winked. Something gave way in his chest then. The music seemed to grow even louder. But as the fiddler let the instrument free and it wandered away from the melody, the guitar fought with the fiddle, soaring and falling with it. The bodhran player was up to the hunt and he smiled and closed his eyes while his hands became a blur. The mob seemed to surge as it moved, egging on the musicians. Kathleen’s face had taken on colour, Minogue noted. He must write to Daithi tomorrow. She felt his stare and turned. For several seconds her face took on that frown he remembered from that day they’d had a puncture high up over the Burren. There was something beyond anxiety in that look, he believed. He raised an eyebrow at her. He felt the muscles in his cheeks begin to give way. God, he thought, he seemed to be finally climbing out of this. He leaned in toward her and grasped her hand.
“You’re the wild woman now to drag me up here. It’s like cold water thrown in your face.”
“Had to be done,” she said. Her eyes had lost the fear and they glistened now. “You were turned in on yourself too long, man.”
“We must come here again when it’s as mad, so.”
Kilmartin was back with a clutch of drinks in his hands. He stooped in over the table and placed the glasses down firmly. For a moment, Minogue thought of tagged exhibits being positioned on the table under the bench.
“I had to walk on a few head-cases to get to the bloody bar,” he shouted into Minogue’s ear.
Pilgrim, exile, tourist, son,
Leaving here I thought I’d won,
Next time I’m back, I’ll bring a sign
Hey, while I’m here, this town is mine!
Voices roared throughout the pub. Still Minogue heard Joey Mad spit out the words.
Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,
But I’m a desperate man!
“Jesus,” Kilmartin broke in between Kathleen and Minogue. “People buy that, you know!”
More whoops erupted and the fiddle returned to race with the guitar.
“They pay good money to hear this clown tell ’em something like that!” Kilmartin’s mockery stopped abruptly.
“Christ,” he said, too softly for Minogue to hear, but the Inspector turned his head in the direction Kilmartin was looking. John Tynan, Commissioner of Gardai, raised a glass of amber-coloured liquid in wry salute. Kathleen had noticed too. She leaned into her husband.
“Are you in trouble? Are we in trouble, I mean?”
Minogue shrugged. He picked up his drink and headed into the crowd. Kilmartin followed. Blocked for several moments by two women executing an impromptu two-step to the repeated chorus, Minogue turned to his colleague.
“How come he’s here?”
“Well, he phoned earlier in the day. Asked if you were around or if I’d be in touch with you. I happened to mention that you-well, Kathleen, I mean-had invited us up to this madhouse for a jar. Social, like.”
Minogue probed for sincerity in Kilmartin’s eyes before making his way toward the Garda Commissioner.
Tynan stepped out the front door of the pub and into the yard. Minogue and Kilmartin ambled with him toward the wall that flanked the Barnacullia road below.
“Lovely,” said Tynan.
“Before your man inside started his shouting and screeching,” said Kilmartin.
“The view, I was thinking,” said Tynan.
The Commissioner leaned his elbows on the wall and looked out to the lights mapping the coastline of Dublin. North of the city, a plane’s winking lights floated down to meet the waiting airport lights. Behind them came the muffled rumble of the pub. The door opened and blew music out into the night, stealing it back as it slammed shut.
“A lot of our tax-free artists, musicians and the like, live up around here,” Tynan observed.
Minogue guessed that Tynan had attended parties in such houses.
“Social Welfare,” Minogue murmured. “Sort of grows on you.”
A trill sounded from somewhere on Tynan’s upper body.
“Excuse me,” he said, and he pulled out a telephone from inside his coat. He fingered a switch and turned away. Kilmartin elbowed Minogue and winked. Minogue felt like punching his colleague hard in the shoulder.
“Give me a half an hour, then,” Tynan said. The door of the pub opened again.
… a desperate town,
…and I’m a…
Tynan dropped the phone down the inside of his coat.
“Apparently I’m late for something. So says Rachel.”
Why come up here then, Minogue thought. Tynan’s clairvoyance startled the Inspector.
“I heard you’d be doing some of your recuperating up here tonight,” he said. “So I decided to drop by.”
Kilmartin took a drink from his glass, shuffled and looked out over the lights.
“Well. How is it with you?”
“Everything takes time.”
“You got off to a false start there in the County Hospital in Ennis,” Tynan said.
Minogue had been waiting for Kilmartin’s gibe about his mad rush to get out of County Clare but it had yet to be uttered.
“I didn’t realise the shape I was really in,” Minogue said. “It was almost like a dream, I remember thinking.”
“A bad business,” said Tynan. “But you did right.”
Minogue wanted to contest this. He had already detected in Tynan’s gaze that the Commissioner knew something about him from talking to others. Minogue had spoken but once to the Commissioner, when Tynan had phoned him at home.
“Well, now. Did Jim pass on the word to you?”
Kilmartin was now swaying slightly from the knees. He did not look away from the lights below.
“No.”
“The Squad stays as is,” said Tynan. “That’s what I decided.”
The Commissioner turned to Kilmartin with an eyebrow up.
“After all, I’m top dog. What I say goes.”
Minogue noticed that Kilmartin had stopped swaying. Tynan sipped at his whiskey and turned back to Minogue.
“Had a call from Ennis,” Tynan resumed. “Superintendent Russell.”
He took another sip and his gaze stayed fixed, like Kilmartin’s, on the lights.
“Says hello to you, by the way.”
“Very nice of him, I’m sure,” said Minogue.
“Yes. Tom says you should get in touch with him the next time you’re coming down to Clare on business.”
“I was on me holidays,” Minogue said.
Tynan seemed to ignore Minogue’s qualification. “Before you leave Dublin, he was at pains to note. ”
“I believe I know what you mean.”
“What Tom Russell meant,” Tynan corrected, “was this. Are you going down on another trip in the near future, maybe?”
Minogue thought of the County Hospital, of Mick and Maura and Eoin in visiting. Mick had smuggled in a half-bottle of whiskey. Maura had slipped as she had kissed her brother-in-law and landed on him. They’re talking about the farm at last, she had whispered in his ear. She phoned Kathleen a week later with the news that Eoin had persuaded his father to apply for money to drain the four boggy fields, the Kilshanny quarter as the family knew them. They’d had an agricultural adviser in walking the fields with them. They’d visited the bank.
Minogue thought of Crossan walking from the bed to the window, back to the bed, while he talked about Jamesy Bourke’s funeral, the guns found in a field behind the Howards’ house, the arrests around Clare. Back in Dublin, Minogue had spent a day mooching around the Art Gallery, hiding in Bewleys. He had admitted to no one how shaky he was. Dan Howard’s face, looking empty and older and lined in places Minogue couldn’t remember noticing from before, had been on the front page of The Irish Times two days in a row.
The Inspector had found the box of photos in the wardrobe. He had taken the photos out of the box and kept them in his pocket. He hoped that if he tried harder or sneaked up suddenly on the snapshots, he would spot some semblance of the smiling man from his sleep in the grainy pictures of Eamonn. When he got home that evening, Kathleen told him that Crossan had phoned again. The lawyer wanted to know if Minogue would be coming down for Sheila Howard’s funeral. Minogue went first to the cabinet under the sink, then to the front room where he had thought about Crossan’s question for almost an hour.
“I think not.”
Tynan nodded.
“There’s an article in the Independent,” said Tynan. “Very catchy title too. Credit to a journalist by the name of Hynes, co-written with another one. Do you know Hynes, Jim?”
“He’s been a boil on me arse for an undue number of years,” said Kilmartin with little malice.
“Must have a good source,” said Tynan. “Sharp info. He speaks well of your Squad. Very well indeed.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” said Kilmartin. “It’s only the truth.”
“I suppose that they get the Independent down in Ennis or thereabouts,” Tynan said. Kilmartin gave the Commissioner a knowing look.
“‘Out with the old Guard, in with the new,’” said Tynan. “Catchy, isn’t it?” Kilmartin grunted.
“Well,” Tynan sighed. “Just thought I’d drop by. Not often I get the chance.” He drew the lapels of his coat tighter.
“Oh,” he said, and turned to Minogue. “I asked Jim if you’d be long away.”
Minogue frowned. Kilmartin began to sway again, but he did not take his eyes from the view to return Minogue’s glare. Tynan resumed his prodding.
“Told me he didn’t know. You, ah, hadn’t told him yet.”
The Inspector looked beyond Kilmartin to the spectacle of the night city below. The music had stopped. A door opened and the three policemen looked back at two men laughing raucously in the yard. The dark mass of the mountain above the pub seemed closer, larger. Hoey heading for Africa. How things turn out, Hoey had said to him in Bewleys the other day. Hoey hadn’t looked at him when he had said that, he recalled. Minogue turned back to the city view.
The lights of the city fell into no overall pattern that he could discern. He let his eyes drift up a little. The few stars he could make out in the city’s dull glow did not follow any pattern either. How the hell did people see chariots and horses and ploughs and goddesses up there? But as he looked, Minogue was startled to find that more stars seemed to be appearing. How did that happen? Kilmartin cleared his throat.
“Two weeks or so, I imagine,” Minogue heard himself say. “Then I’m back.”
Kilmartin turned. Tynan nodded. Minogue emptied his glass.