Minogue made another quick study of the man’s face. The eyes were lazy and red from the drink, the pocked skin still oily. Thomas Martin Nolan, known to his few mates and the man he had killed three hours earlier as Jelly Nolan, seemed sober. Nolan’s eyes were fixed on a ventilation grate high up on the wall where grey lines of dust, years’ worth, edged the metal. He drew on his cigarette. Nolan was twenty-two but he looked five years older. His red hair was cropped close, and the ends of his thin moustache curled into the corners of his mouth. His body was already thickening from too much drink and stodgy food. Nolan fingered the studs in his ear before he squashed his cigarette into the saucer with his left hand. Then he examined his hands carefully, pausing to stare at the nicotine-stained fingernails. Although Minogue had all he needed from the earlier session twenty minutes ago when Hoey and he had done the interview, the Inspector decided that he might as well get as much as he could from Nolan before Legal Aid showed up.
Nolan cleared his throat. “Any more fags?”
Minogue shook his head. Hoey had left the room five minutes ago. “Well, fuck you and the horse you robbed to get to Dublin on, you culchie bastard.”
Minogue was suddenly seized by an urge to reach across the table and hammer Nolan in the face. He grasped the table-top and searched Nolan’s face again. Jelly Nolan had kicked a man to death outside a pub in Drimnagh. Nolan had known the victim, John McArdle, all his life. McArdle had worked as a deliveryman for a Dublin newspaper. He had loaned Nolan twenty quid a week ago and last night in the pub he had asked for it back. When Nolan wasn’t forthcoming, McArdle had taunted him. Nolan had gone drinking elsewhere but had returned at closing-time and followed McArdle down a lane. There he had felled McArdle from behind and kicked him in the head until McArdle lay dead in a puddle of cranial blood fed from his ears and nose. McArdle hadn’t known that Nolan was in a corner already, running from a local shark to whom he was in hock fifteen hundred quid. Caught knocking off food, Nolan had also been sacked from his job stocking supermarket shelves. He had run out of friends, run out of a future. Minogue had heard of the shark, Carty, before. Cash Carty and his brother, Shocko, collected debts with legendary brutality.
Nolan glared back under his eyebrows at the Inspector.
“What’s the big bleeding staring match about? Here I am doing your job for you. All I want is a few fags. You got everything you want there, haven’t you? I signed your bleeding statement. I didn’t give yous any run-around. So what’s the big deal?”
He was sure he could take Nolan handily. He was also afraid he’d not stop with the first blow. Nolan frowned and leaned back in the chair. His white boiler suit reminded Minogue of a patient awaiting surgery. Detective Garda Shea Hoey opened the door of the interview room. He looked at Minogue, raised his eyebrows and broke the Inspector’s stare fixed on Nolan. Minogue lurched out into the corridor. Hoey introduced a sleepy-eyed woman in jeans and a leather jacket as Kate Marrinan from Legal Aid. She spoke tonelessly to Minogue.
“Has he made a statement?”
“Yep,” replied Minogue. “Got the caution in front of a witness, signed the waiver.”
Not much older than Iseult, he guessed. Kate Marrinan had short fair hair with a touch of red. She looked at her watch, yawned and swung a shoulder bag around front. Minogue’s anger had ebbed. He wanted real coffee, a chance to chat to Kate Marrinan about her work. Both hopes were long shots and he knew it.
“He’s all yours. Mr Jelly Nolan. I think he’s relieved to be in custody. Almost looking forward to being put away.”
She wrote “Jelly Nolan” on a notepad.
“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself, Inspector?” She hadn’t taken her eyes from the notepad.
“I’ve been accused of worse,” he tried. “But I think people cod me with comments like that because of my easygoing disposition.”
Kate Marrinan squinted at him. She remembered him now.
“Huh. I heard different. Who’s codding who here?” Minogue almost smiled. There were pleasant dangers to being known as a character in Dublin.
“We have seen to the rights of the accused in every respect,” he began. “He was quite keen to tell us about what he did up that laneway and how he did it-”
“ If he did it, you mean.”
“Twelve o’clock today, his clothes and shoes will come out of the lab with evidence tags on them,” Hoey weighed in. “Open and shut.”
“Signed in at one o’clock,” Minogue murmured. “He’ll go to the Bridewell and get remanded over first thing in the morning.”
What sounded like a sigh to Minogue escaped from Kate Marrinan. She hugged her shoulder bag and laid her hand on the door handle.
“Where’s the fags?” Nolan called out. “And a bit of tea or something so as I can keep me bleeding eyes open.”
The door opened.
“Who’s she?” the detectives heard Nolan ask.
“I’m your legal counsel,” Kate Marrinan said. “And I don’t smoke.”
Hoey and Minogue huddled in the doorway and watched the fine rain glow around the streetlights. Through the hush of rain, Minogue heard trains being shunted at Heuston Station at this western end of Dublin’s quays. Hoey spoke through a yawn.
“I know what you’re saying.”
“Nearly let him have it, all right,” Minogue murmured again. “I must be losing it or something.”
“It wouldn’t have done him any harm.”
The rain was steady and gentle, as though it were being sprinkled methodically. Drains gurgled in the middle distance; a gutter drummed tinnily next to the door. Hoey took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He turned from Minogue and a folded airmail envelope fell to the pavement. Minogue picked it up and nudged Hoey’s upper arm. The detective turned back in a cloud of smoke.
“Fell out of your pocket.”
Hoey hesitated before taking it. He coughed once and plucked it from the Inspector’s hand. “The latest epistle. St. Aine to the pagans.” Minogue registered the ironic tone but said nothing. “Says the people are very nice,” Hoey went on. “The Zimbabweans. Did I say that right?”
Minogue wondered if Hoey kept all his girlfriend’s letters in his pockets. “Sounds right. Here, I’ll be in sometime in the morning proper. See if I can sleep this off. Maybe I’ll wake up and find out it was just a bloody dream or something.”
Hoey flicked a glowing butt out onto the street. It hissed and was carried as it landed. The two detectives watched as it was propelled along, spinning, by a lazy runnel of water. Trapped for several seconds on a drain-grate, the butt bobbed before it was snapped abruptly into the darkness below.
Minogue tried to stay clear of the bottle of Jamesons whiskey which he knew was kept beneath the kitchen sink. Kathleen Minogue had had new cabinetry installed that spring but the cupboard under the sink remained her detention area for whiskey. Her husband read its proximity to cleaning agents as her subconscious rebuke.
He was too restless to go to bed. He thought about tea-coffee would wake him up too much-and then he thought about a man being kicked to death in a laneway awash with rain. Kate Marrinan would doubtless try for manslaughter, that was her job: no hard feelings. My client is also a victim, a victim of hopelessness, of alcohol, of inadequate education; he is prey to vicious social evils endemic to working-class areas — drug abuse, loansharking; he is a young man of inadequate personality…
Minogue was an Inspector in the Investigation Section of the Garda Technical Bureau. His office was in St. John’s Road, hard by Garda H.Q. in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Although seniority would have allowed him to dodge an on-call shift after ten o’clock at night, Minogue insisted on his name being entered on the rota. He partnered Seamus Hoey, a Garda fifteen years his junior from Galway. In the six years he had worked with him, Minogue had been unable to figure him out. He liked Hoey a great deal and didn’t mind his colleague’s moods.
He heard stirring upstairs: his wife turning over in bed, he decided. Kathleen had become a heavy sleeper since they had had the house to themselves. Their daughter, Iseult, had moved to a flat in Cabra, to be with her fella, Pat the Brain, Minogue guessed. Kathleen knew this too and pretended not to know. Iseult worked mostly with embroidery out of a shared studio in Temple Bar. This last year she had been given a grant to travel the length and breadth of the country working up murals on school walls. Sometimes he liked to think of his daughter as beginning a mural in Donegal and painting it all the way down to Kerry, cutting a swath of colour and life across the island.
The Minogues’ son, Daithi, was biding his time in Boston, three months away from a Donnelly visa allowing him to work legally in the U.S. Daithi had displayed an American girlfriend on a visit home eighteen months ago. He had spoken feelingly of the States being full of opportunity. Kathy had slept in the attic, talked glowingly of her Irish ancestors and been unremittingly cheerful during her two-week stay. She had an enthusiasm for learning more about the Celts and learning Gaelic. Even Kathleen had been impressed.
The rain seemed to have let up. He moved away from the window and again considered the Jamesons. Maybe read for a half-hour to settle his thoughts down. He pulled down glossy folders from the top of the television set and studied the floor plans. Kathleen had the bug about selling their house and moving into these apartments or a townhouse. What about a garden, he had asked. What for, was her answer to that. Land, he had told her-something to walk on, somewhere to plant things that she thought still came mysteriously from the supermarket. No need to be sarcastic, she had replied, and then took the high road: why not something different from the run-of-the-mill? A terrace, a Japanese style of place with lumps of rock and shrubs and what have you, somewhere he could sit and read. He had retired from the fray at that stage and had spent his energies in avoiding the topic since.
He yawned and studied the floor plans. Fitted kitchens, security systems, prestigious addresses, easy access to the city. Huh, he thought. “Easy access to the city”: Dublin? Must be a joke. He felt the resentment prowling behind his thoughts then. He dumped the folder on the chair and hot-footed it to the kitchen with the words sour and ugly in his mind: lifestyle, state-of-the-art, unrivalled. Kathleen worked as a secretary for an auctioneer and came home with these brochures almost daily now. Her employer could get them a deal, she argued. How could he tell her that the last thing he wanted was a deal? Kathleen had been the thrifty and sensible gatherer all these years but he had lately begun to see in himself a stronger urge to shed. He grasped the bottle of Jamesons and cast about for a tumbler. He paused then and, leaning against the counter kitchen, stared at the sink. Manslaughter’d have Jelly Nolan on the street inside five years. If Cartys, the loan sharks, didn’t do for Nolan one way or another, inside or outside the nick, that is.
Minogue’s thoughts fastened suddenly on Shea Hoey. Hoey was drinking. He, Minogue, second-in-command to Jimmy Kilmartin-the Killer, as he was known for his leadership of the Murder Squad-had not approached anyone about it. Hoey had had a smell of drink to him two days in a row last week, Minogue remembered. Looked washed out. What to say, what to do.
The Jamesons was sharp and it cut at the back of his throat. There was nothing new about Gardai drinking hard off-duty. Hoey’s girlfriend, Aine, had signed up to teach for a stint in Zimbabwe and had flown out in September. Minogue had met Aine twice. She was cheerful, freckled and opinionated. That was teachers for you, he supposed. Hard on the heels of his last gulp from the tumbler came an urge for more. Duty-free, Minogue’s familiar gargoyle jeered nearby. Might as well at that price, go on, can’t you? He took the bottle into the living room, slipped out of his shoes and lay on the couch.
The prevailing winds sweep in from the Atlantic and skim spume from the waves before they slam into the cliffs and inlets of west Clare. Carried up over the cliffs come the faint and massive slaps of the water’s battery, the screeches of sea birds, the winds’ roar. Behind the cliffs’ edges, the grasses flatten and hiss as the gales buffet the headlands of this western edge of Clare and Ireland and Europe known as the Burren. The winds whistle through gorse and heather before they move across the patchwork of fields and drystone walls which creep up the Burren hillsides. Above the fields, boulders appear as a thickening crop which the soil cannot resist pushing to the surface. Higher yet, on the plateaus where the boulders give way to fissured limestone terraces, the gales race on. But in this wilderness which looks to be the work of nature alone, a careful eye can spot marks of ancient settlement. The Famine completed the work of centuries of erosion and left the Burren almost deserted. Behind them, the waves of settlers have left their ruined castles and churches, their deserted villages, their ancient ring-forts and their graves.
Over Fanore and Kilcorney, through Lismara and Tuamashee, the winds course, battering and caressing, rippling the surfaces of turloughs, those seasonal lakes brimming with dark water. Like cattle labouring home full, the clouds move with the wind over the towns and villages and the long wet ribbons of roads that lead across the midland plains. With rain on the wind, the whole island can be wet within hours of those first clouds descending on the Burren. Although the hills on the west coast draw down heavy, dreary rains, they still leave enough for the midland pastures and even for Dublin city. In the Kilmacud suburb of that city, Minogue, long exiled from the precincts of the Burren, slept fitfully on the couch.
Kathleen Minogue, Dublinwoman, opened the bedroom curtains just in time to see the Dublin Mountains fade into the mist as the rain rolled down into the suburbs. She plugged the kettle in, tiptoed back to the doorway and surveyed her husband. He stirred and laid an arm over his eyes. Asleep in his jacket even, she thought. She was caught between exasperation and pity. He was very long.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he murmured. She started. His eyes stayed dosed as he raised his forearm from his eyes and stretched. The kettle wheezed and ticked stronger in the kitchen.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” she said.
Awake but fuzzy from the whiskey, Minogue tried to pull back a piece of his dream as it fell into obscurity. All that remained was a face indistinctly recalled and fading fast: a man, young, smiling at him, asking him or telling him something. Familiar, gone. At least it wasn’t Jelly Nolan’s face.
“Looking over the wreckage and wondering, I’ll bet,” he said. “Go on, tell me you aren’t now. I’m a detective. You can’t cod me.
“We have an early start on Hallowe’en here with you on the couch. Frankenstein or something.”
“Now I know where Iseult gets her wit.”
She folded her arms and watched Minogue’s eyelids flutter. A tight and pleasant ache cradled itself in her stomach and rose up in her chest. At my age, she thought. Last week he had reached for her in bed, stifling her giggles. She remembered him keen and gentle, whispering to her, saying her name as he coiled about her. Not heavy at all but arching easily, waiting. She flushed and tightened the belt on her dressing gown.
“Raining again,” he said.
“Go up to bed, can’t you.”
“I will not,” he declared. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “And what’s more, I have news for you. You can tell that boss of yours, that go-by-the-wall auctioneer, that after-shave gurrier, that you need a holiday. Are you listening to me?”
“A holiday,” she echoed. “In this? Where were you, in dreamland? It’s nearly winter, mister.”
“Santorini. I saw a picture of it in a window the other day. Blue and white and nothing else.”
Kathleen Minogue headed back to the kitchen. He followed her.
“I heard that all they do there is get twisted drunk and dance on the tables,” she said.
“What’s wrong with that?”
She made a face at him and scalded the teapot.
“God. Have a sup of tea with me and you’ll wake up and talk sense.”
“There are more tears shed over answered prayers,” he muttered.
“Smart remarks department is closed today,” she said. Minogue stared out the window.
“Have you forgotten we’re going down to Clare tomorrow?” Minogue groaned inside. He had forgotten. Maura Minogue, a sister-in-law whose cheerfulness and vivacity seemed invincible to Minogue- the more a miracle, he considered, because she had been married to his brother Mick for over thirty years-had been on the phone to Kathleen. Maura hadn’t asked for anything, but she had cried on the phone once. His nephew Eoin had recently been arrested and charged with possession of a gun which the Guards had taken from a bag in the boot of his car. The bag belonged to his friend but Eoin, weaned on his father’s Republican cant and full of a touchy and twisted sense of loyalty to the friend he had given a lift to, had delayed his own acquittal by making haughty speeches to the Guards. Eoin was to inherit the farm from Minogue’s ailing brother Mick, who was now too arthritic to do anything but token jobs on the farm. Farmers had fallen on hard times in the last few years. Now that she was marooned on the farm with Mick, finances a bit sticky maybe, Maura’s morale was hitting bottom, Minogue surmised.
“Did you hear me?”
Kathleen had read her sister-in-law’s conversation to mean that Maura wanted him to try and talk Mick and Eoin into selling part of the farm while there was still value in it. Minogue closed his eyes.
“I hear you.”
By the clumps of sodden grass that covered the rubble, a figure stood still. The rain dribbled off the rim of his cap and the breezes tousled his beard and hair. The rain had saturated his coat completely now and he felt cold drops roll down along his spine. The noises had stopped. He took his fists away from his ears and opened his eyes. Just the ruin and wet grasses and bushes under a low sky with the rain steady over everything. The cold had begun to fasten about his chest. He had been standing there for almost half an hour. The dog had tired of exploring and now lay at his feet. Occasionally it would get up, shake itself and nudge at the man’s knees with its snout. He would soothe the dog with words and strokes before returning to stare at the remains of the cottage. The more he tried to imagine it, the harder it got. The frustration clawed at his heart again and he heard himself whispering aloud trying to concentrate. The rain seemed to be getting heavier. In the few months since his release, he had come here many times. He had seen the odd car slowing as it passed the ruin, the driver eying him, but he never returned their cautious nods of greeting. Once he had thought of calling out to them: Yes, it’s Jamesy Bourke, all right, back to set things right at last. You can tell the whole bloody world that too, damn you! He thought back to the fear which had seized him just two days ago when he had started throwing the pills into the fire. Each day now, he committed the day’s ration of seven pills to the fire. The first time he had done it, his hand had reached out reflexively to save the melting pills from the embers, as though that part of him knew better than what his mind had decided.
But now the images that came to him had become clearer than ever. In spite of his fears, the pictures that sometimes exploded in his mind had not been the ones he had had back in the cell, the ones he remembered with a vague but overwhelming dread. Wonder drugs, they called them, but he had known all along they were used to keep you stupid too. For a moment he saw in the steady rain the face of the social worker who visited weekly in his shiny Volkswagen, faking cheer and sympathy on that pink, unlined face behind the glasses. He had come to hate that face too. It belonged to another one he had to surrender to if he was to keep alive his chance of getting his life back. You run a very grave risk-he heard the words again against the slowly waving bushes that still rooted by the ruin which was also the ruin of his life-a very great risk of relapse if you don’t maintain the treatment. Grave, relapse. Fuck him.
All that remained were the stones and the slab which had made up the floor of the cottage. Sort of like a grave but no one tended it. Jane was buried out in Canada. Murty Maher, the farmer who had rented the place to Jane, had bulldozed the walls after the fire. Bad luck on the house no doubt, and Maher had kept away from the place ever since. His hands seemed to remember that night better than his brain. The skin burned nearly black from trying to pull down the door as it was burning, but he hadn’t felt it at the time. Drunk, of course, too drunk. Some things he remembered but they had never fitted together: the way the flames burst out the windows after exploding the glass, the roar of the fire, the thatched roof she had liked collapsing with a whoosh. The heat on his face, his own screams that ripped at his throat so that he thought he had swallowed part of the fire itself, a Guard’s face inches from his own, shouting at him while he dragged him away by the neck. The hospital, the jail, his dejection at the trial were clearer memories. He hadn’t been interested in living, he recalled.
The wind blustered and flung rain into his face and he turned away. He looked at the shrubs and bushes that had run wild as they leaned with the wind. Stray leaves flew around him. His coat was heavy on him, pulling down his shoulders. He hadn’t slept last night and he still didn’t feel bad. Maybe he’d try to take a snooze when he got home and changed. A slap, like a hammer-strike on wood, was carried faintly on the wind to him. Thunder? The dog stood slowly, her ears pricked and her head rolling from side to side to hear better. She whined and looked to him. He called to her and began to make his way down to the road, stepping up over the mound of rubble which had been pushed out from the house to block the laneway against tinkers drawing their caravans in and settling. He stopped then and turned for a last look at what had been Jane Clark’s house. Here his own life had stopped too: like the floor dropping beneath him, he had tumbled into a nightmare which had lasted twelve years. And it still wasn’t over. He’d never met any of the Minogues. He had known them to see but, like the rest of them now, he knew they would be wary of him, pitying at best. Yet again the thought wormed into him that even Crossan had promised he’d get in touch with Minogue, the big-shot Guard in Dublin, just to get rid of him. He’d go to Crossan’s office in Ennis before the week was out, by God, and see what he had done. A. Crossan, Barrister-at-Law, he recalled on the plate by the door. Huh. Crossan had changed like the rest of them. He’d had twelve years to do it in, to get on with his life. The office and the secretary with her eyes like bloody saucers when he had walked in. Crossan no more than fucking Dan Howard didn’t want to be reminded of things that they’d written off as dead and buried years ago. But Crossan was all he had for now.
The anger tingled in his arms before it burned his chest. The rainwater ran across the road in little rippling waves like the sea ebbing on the strand. The drugs would only keep him asleep. That was like letting part of himself stay dead. It was time to wake up. Better this way than hanging on, hanging around with half a life. He called out to the dog and his heart lightened when he saw the wagging tail, the willingness. There were prisons with bars, he thought as he set out for home, and there were other prisons too. His prison now was his own memory, but he had been locked out.
Kilmartin was waiting for him. Minogue bowed to Eilis, the secretary of the Murder Squad, as he passed. She spared him a smile and a mock curtsy in return for his.
“Your Worship,” she intoned in her native Irish.
“Aha,” Kilmartin called out. “Hardy Canute himself. Howiya?”
“I’m a bit shagged.”
“Well, that’s life in the big city, pal.”
Minogue glanced at the mass of his friend and colleague, Chief Inspector James Kilmartin. Eilis scratched a match alight next to him.
“A real beaut,” said Kilmartin, thumbs behind his belt now.
“Kathleen doesn’t think so,” Minogue baited. “Says it’s depressing.”
“I didn’t mean the fecking weather. I meant last night. The job done above in Drimnagh. Signed, sealed and delivered.”
“He had enough drink in him to get manslaughter, I’m thinking,” said Minogue. “So does Legal Aid. The way I heard her anyway. She’ll go wild when she hears he confessed. Expect a call, I’d say.”
Kilmartin’s expression turned thoughtful.
“God, you’re crooked today,” he murmured. “‘Her’?”
“Kate Marrinan.”
Kilmartin rolled his eyes. “Jesus. That one? A grenade disguised as a barrister. She gave me a few kicks in the balls when she was defending that fella what killed the fella with a hammer…Hogan. ‘Victim of society’ shite, right?”
“She didn’t give me the treatment last night anyway.”
“Wait till court, bucko. Jesus wept. She’s an expert on everything. Did you hit the sack at all?”
“Enough of it. Is Shea in?”
Kilmartin’s brow creased with the effort of holding back a comment. Minogue wondered if Kilmartin knew of Detective Garda Shea Hoey’s habits lately.
“You know I’m off starting tomorrow. Get a break for a few days.”
Kilmartin’s brow shot up. He nodded toward his office. As Minogue followed him, he saw a yawning Hoey slope in past Eilis’s desk.
“Just give me a hand in drafting a press release to warn all the gutties and head-cases that they’re to wait until you come back from your holiday to-”
“You’re a howl, Jimmy.”
“Just a bit of levity, Matt. Don’t get your rag out over it. Course there’s no bother. Sure haven’t you overtime built up like a bank?”
“Good, so.”
“Yes. Morale is everything.” The Chief Inspector nodded his head as he spoke now. “A bit of R and R to keep you sharp. It builds morale, let me tell you. You can throw your hat at the technical stuff if you haven’t the morale built up. Amn’t I right?”
The phrase echoed in Minogue’s thoughts: Build the morale? Sounded like Kilmartin was trying out a phrase he had heard in his hob-nobs with senior Gardai. The new Garda Commissioner, John Tynan, had made Kilmartin and other senior Gardai jittery. Kilmartin knew that Tynan was planning a major reorganisation of the Gardai. The new Garda Commissioner’s back was not for slapping and Kilmartin, the tribal chief with his repertoire of bombast and charm, still struggled to find a purchase on the metropolitan modern, Tynan. Minogue bumped into Tynan more than chance allowed. Wary of him, he still liked the Commissioner’s dry wit, especially its effects on the likes of Jim Kilmartin.
“But Jases, look outside, it’s bucketing. Are you going to hide at home and do a bit of wallpapering and painting or something?”
“A visit to Clare for a day or two. Then I was half thinking of somewhere like… Santorini.”
Kilmartin frowned but Minogue let him dangle for a few moments.
“It’s in Greece.”
“Well that’s very exciting, I’m sure.”
“Wouldn’t mind a week there if we could get a cheap seat. Morale, don’t you know.” He frowned back at Kilmartin. “Build morale, like.”
Kilmartin didn’t register receipt of the gibe.
“Have you court?” he asked instead.
“Ten days’ time,” Minogue answered. “State has no plan to call me up. Yet.”
“All right so. But listen. There’s something I heard last night that I didn’t like one little bit. Not saying there’s a fly in the ointment as regards you and Kathleen having a fling off in wherever.”
“Santorini. You have to ride on the back of an ass to get up from the ferry, I hear.”
Kilmartin’s brow creased again.
“Arra Jases you can do that below in Belmullet, man,” he scoffed, referring to his home town in Mayo. He narrowed his glance.
“I bumped into Tom Boyle at a shindig. You know Tom, don’t you? Got a kick up the ladder the same time Tynan got the throne.”
Minogue remembered a slim, dapper Chief Superintendent Boyle from a drinks party at Kilmartin’s new house in Killiney. Boyle now occupied Tynan’s former position of Assistant Garda Commissioner.
“I know him not to run him over in the street, I suppose.”
“Uh-huh. Well. Tom says that Tynan’s a week away from a final decision about ‘reorganisation.’ Says Tynan is a holy terror in committee. Won’t listen to reason. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I do and I don’t.”
Kilmartin flashed a wily smile.
“Come on now, Matty. Don’t lay the ace and you with the knave in your fist. You and Tynan are thick enough when you want to be.”
Minogue’s thoughts had flown to the prospect of a large white coffee in Bewleys. A read of the paper, plenty of noise and chat. Sociable, solitary, solace-noisy Dublin’s best secret.
“Well? Has he dropped any hint to you about folding up the Squad here?”
Of course the travel posters would have been treated to highlight the blue of the Mediterranean, Minogue thought, throwing up the whitewashed walls to startle the eye. Turquoise…but the pictures couldn’t be all hammed. Fishing nets and boats bobbing in the harbour. He heard Kilmartin’s tones straying into the combat zone.
“He doesn’t use me as a sounding board, Jim. It’s just social and how-do with him.”
“That a fact?” Kilmartin asked with his eyebrows arched. “Well, Tom Boyle isn’t one for idle chat, let me tell you. No flies on Tom, by Jesus. No sirree Bob.”
Minogue turned his gaze on Kilmartin but didn’t see him. He knew as well as Kilmartin that there had been a stay of execution on the current structure of the Murder Squad for several years. The Squad had been slated to move to Garda Headquarters proper in the Phoenix Park, adjacent to the Forensic Science Lab and the nabobs who could look over Kilmartin’s shoulder day to day.
But by dint of Kilmartin’s work, the Squad had not yet been folded back into its parent group, the Technical Bureau. Kilmartin had parleyed, parried and placated his way into preserving his fiefdom. He had taken in more trainees from Garda Divisions all over the country. He had circulated Murder Squad detectives through other areas of the Technical Bureau to broaden their expertise. Kilmartin had made exemplary use of the new and emerging technologies. He had integrated computers and new communications protocols flawlessly. He had sat through complaint sessions with ranking Gardai from the country who were riled at having to run to Dublin for help in murder investigations.
“I really don’t know any more than yourself, Jimmy.”
Kilmartin changed tack.
“Maybe you don’t give a fiddler’s fart, Matt.”
“Well, there are days…”
Kilmartin leaned in over his desk.
“Look, head-the-ball. You think I don’t know what’s going on? Me bollicks. I know you. Shy but willing, we say at home, like an ass chewing thistles. You know Tynan a damn sight better than I do. Find out what the hell he thinks we don’t do well here. What we can do to keep him away. Budget? Public relations? More trainees? Christ, he can’t complain about the stats! Didn’t we clear 95 per cent last year? Well…aside from the feuding, of course.”
A feud between the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army had blown a large statistical hole in the Squad’s proud record. As though to taunt Kilmartin personally, both groups had taken up the habit of abducting a victim in the North and then killing him inside the border of the Republic-or vice versa. More often than not, this grisly ruse left the Royal Ulster Constabulary, whom Kilmartin despised, the kidnapping investigation and the Gardai the murder investigation.
Kilmartin’s tone had grown moody.
“It’s just that I know Tynan is looking right through me anytime I talk to him,” he said.
Bewleys in Grafton Street would be just about right at this time of the day. The dinnertime mob gone. But the rain? Jam the car up on the path in Dawson Street and scamper over. With any luck it’d be robbed. How much would insurance pay out for an eight-year-old Fiat…?
“Well?” Kilmartin repeated.
“I’ll give it my considered opinion. Will that do you?”
Kilmartin scowled and fixed Minogue with a one-eyed glare.
“When will you be talking to Monsignor Tynan, then?”
The irritation rushed back to Minogue.
“Jimmy-” Kilmartin waved away his response.
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “ ‘Tynan plays above board.’ ‘He’d come straight to me to sort anything out.’ ‘He’d do right by us.’ Hail Mary, Holy Mary, and the rest of it. All I’m saying is-”
“I’ll phone and see.”
“Ah, Jases! I’d sooner you said nothing than go around to him with a puss on you. He’ll know I asked you.”
Minogue rubbed his eyes.
“You’re an iijit sometimes, Matt. All I’m trying to tell you is that the personal touch is what clinches things. I’m not asking you to butter him up. Look, I can tell you straight out that I know”-Kilmartin paused and pointed his finger at the desktop-“I know that Tynan thinks very highly of you-”
“He’s never asked me once-”
“Shut up a minute and listen. I don’t resent that one bit. Doesn’t bother me one iota that you might have more of Tynan’s ear than I do. Not one bit. And Tynan’s not stupid.”
“I’ll pass that news on to him for you.”
“Don’t be a smart arse, you. Listen. Tynan has to make some response to the Divisional Supers, we all know that. They want their own glory. What’ll decide Tynan in the end is not the computers and the stats. It’ll be the human factor. It’s our culture sure, man! Here, come on. You know what I’m getting at, don’t you?” Kilmartin rapped his knuckles on his colleague’s shoulder and gave Minogue a pantomime wink.
“Well…”
“Here, I’ll tell you in plain English. What the hell does Tynan need from us so’s he’ll leave us alone? Am I getting through to you?”
Minogue nodded. Kilmartin beamed.
“Ah, you’re a star! A real trooper. We’ll say no more about it. Now, tell us a bit more about this Saint place.”
“Santorini. It’s in Greece, I told you. Cradle of civilisation, don’t you know.”
“Oho! Greece is right. You’d want to watch you don’t end up on the flat of your back there with the runs, boyo.” Kilmartin nodded solemnly. “They cook up bits of meat and what-have-you there. Right in the street, bejases. A pal of Maura’s went there and spent half her holiday in the jacks-”
Minogue stared back at his superior.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Jim. Very sorry.”
Kilmartin guffawed.
“I’m sure you are,” said the Chief Inspector, hearty again. “Now shag off with yourself, ya bowsie. But phone me when you get your leg in the door with Tynan.”
Minogue reviewed the statements taken from one Tommy-John Casey several weeks ago. Casey had been in a dispute with a relation over the rent of pasture in the townland of Inisgeall, County Mayo. Casey and his victim, Patrick Tuohy, had repaired to a pub in Ballina in the hopes, Casey maintained, of coming to an amicable arrangement. The two men had continued drinking until midnight, whereupon Tommy-John Casey left the pub, got into his car and ran over Tuohy on a narrow road a mile outside town. Didn’t know what had come over him, Casey had repeated over and over again. Kilmartin had read the statement with Minogue. What came over him, Kilmartin had scoffed, was the car. Casey had been contrite and candid with the Gardai. Minogue, unimpressed, had pointed to the fact that Casey had driven a further two hundred yards along the road beyond the point where he had catapulted Tuohy over the hedge, smashing his windscreen and leaving Tuohy dying, his skull shattered.
He glanced over at Hoey. His colleague’s face looked a little puffy. Lack of sleep, bachelor diet. Drink, of course.
“Well, Shea,” he said. “Can I leave you in the lurch with Jelly Nolan? It’s well cooked already.”
Hoey blinked and cleared his throat.
“No bother,” he said.
The tight smile looked bleak to Minogue. Murtagh, another of the detectives permanently attached to the Murder Squad, walked through the office with file folders under his arm. He whistled softly around the pencil protruding from his mouth. Minogue found himself smiling at the sight, then he remembered Hoey. How could policemen be so different? Hoey, the dark horse, moody and reserved; Murtagh, surely beloved and spoiled as a child, a cocky athlete who gleefully chased nurses in night-clubs.
Minogue closed the folder on Tommy-John Casey and sat back. A countryman himself, Minogue understood rows about land. Dublin people wouldn’t, he believed. The primal hunger for land bred during starving centuries wasn’t imprinted on them. Land hunger, land disputes, wills’ probate fought over, aging bachelor farmers, family farms. But Jelly Nolan and his likes still remained ciphers to the Inspector. He wanted to know as little as possible about Nolan’s life. Self-protective, he knew, and he felt himself recoiling from the thought of just how cramped and ugly Nolan’s life must have been. There had to be a better line of work than sitting across a table from the Jelly Nolans of this world.
His thoughts wandered to Kilmartin’s probes about the Commissioner. Damn him for sending him like a spy to Tynan. What the hell use was it trying to explain to Kilmartin that he had no influence with Tynan? Tynan: a jigsaw with no guarantee you’d find all the bits, ever. Maybe Tynan was trying to get Kilmartin and Minogue amp; Co. ready for the end of an era. The soft glove of a blunt hand in elegy, a broad hint that Kilmartin and Minogue would do well to retire before the Squad was dispersed. His eyes focussed again on the papers. He considered phoning a travel agent and trying to book some airline seats but realised he didn’t know how many days they’d be staying in Clare. Damn again. He shoved the Casey file in the Current Trial cabinet and saw that the rain had stopped.
Minogue in Bewleys was a happy man. The stained glass below the restaurant’s skylights seemed to be moving. Clouds, he judged. He stood in line for coffee and noted that the racket from dishes and chairs and cutlery seemed muted today. Minogue had just deployed his coffee and bun when the clink of china on the marble table-top drew his head up from his newspaper. John Tynan, Commissioner of the Gardai, edged into the booth next to Minogue.
“Damn,” said Tynan and headed out again. “Sugar.”
Minogue tried to gather his wits as he studied Tynan’s well-tailored frame marauding around the cashier’s desk. What was Tynan doing here? Coincidence?
“Slow day?” said Tynan. He sat on Minogue’s side of the table.
“It’s always murder,” said Minogue. “I’m charging the batteries. I was late into the night on a case. Just a break to, em, build morale.”
Tynan eyed Minogue while he stirred his coffee.
“‘Building morale’? I phoned the Squad and was told that you were, quote, ‘doing research.’”
“Eilis might have given me the benefit of the doubt.”
“Anyway. I’m on a walkabout myself.”
Minogue smiled.
“That’s it. Look surprised. No minders, no gun in my pocket.”
Tynan plucked a slim cellular phone from his jacket pocket and showed enough of it for Minogue to recognise the device.
“What do you think?”
The Inspector knew of Tynan’s ways. The new Garda Commissioner had taken to walking about town in civvies, getting a feel for how Dublin was policed. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was annoying several senior civil servants and Gardai with his perambulations.
“Great,” said Minogue.
Tynan looked around the restaurant.
“And how are you all?” he said.
“Good,” said Minogue. “Jimmy’s as ever. You know the style.”
“I meant Kathleen and the children.”
Minogue squirmed a little in the seat. “Great. We’re empty-nesters now. Discretionary income up. We’re getting quite selfish, I suppose.”
“Oho,” said Tynan with no real enthusiasm. “And the children?”
Minogue knew that Tynan had no children. Tynan had studied for the Jesuits many years ago. Rachel Tynan was a Protestant, a former teacher. Her laughter and pottery studio intrigued Minogue. He had watched Tynan at functions, exchanging asides with his wife between speeches, she laughing, he with a straight face. Tynan the cold fish, many thought; Rachel Tynan, whose face reminded Minogue of a peach.
“Oh, we monitor them at a distance. The routine seems to be that I reassure Kathleen. Then I get the willies myself when I see what they’re actually up to.”
Tynan took some more coffee from his cup and sat back.
“I need to pay yous a visit soon.”
Minogue nodded as though considering the news.
“Throw around a few ideas, you know,” Tynan added.
“Great,” said Minogue. Had Kilmartin been tipped off about this?
“Busy enough, are ye?” asked the Commissioner.
Was this a probe? “There’s always work. But we still don’t kill one another that much, don’t forget.”
“Compared to…?”
“Well, compared to the really civilised countries, I mean.”
The Commissioner continued his survey of the clientele in the restaurant.
“We need changes, that’s clear,” he murmured. “It’s a matter of how and where at this stage.”
“So they say in the press, John.”
Tynan gave him a glazed look.
“The Delahunty Factor, you mean?” Tynan asked, his mouth set tight. Minogue nodded.
An Inspector Delahunty, well-known and well-liked by his officers, had told a journalist that the solution to finding people with guns on them was to pull out your own-as long as you were Special Branch- and shoot them down in the street like dogs.
“‘Make-My-Day’ Delahunty. I’ve had more letters about that-”
“Were I not so discreet, John, I might speculate.”
“Let fly, so.”
“This same party let loose those comments as a way to see how our new Garda Commissioner would handle them, our new Garda Commissioner being but months in the office, I mean. And our new Garda Commissioner being a bit of an enigma as yet. One wonders if our new Garda Commissioner is one of ‘de boys’ or if he is one for rocking the boat.”
Tynan almost smiled before turning away. Nothing to tell Kilmartin here, Minogue thought.
“I’ve taken a long hard look this last six months,” Tynan murmured. His eyes returned to Minogue’s. “And what I seem to be seeing is something I last heard of twenty-five years ago when I studied mediaeval society. Warlords squabbling over their own territories. Some of it’s beyond an outrage. It’s nearly comical.”
Indolent and intent, his eyes bored into Minogue’s for several moments.
“It’s stifling. It’s bad for morale. It’s inefficient. And it’s going to stop.”
Minogue took in the force of Tynan’s determination. Should he report the warlord term to the Killer, James Kilmartin? The Commissioner was again looking at the faces around him in the cafe.
Minogue told him about the holiday he was planning. Tynan nodded and told Minogue that the islands were indeed beautiful. Minogue didn’t ask how he knew but he filed away this fact about Tynan to tell Kathleen later. Tynan turned in his seat and stared at Minogue. He seemed cautious now.
“I want you to drop by my office after your jaunt below in Clare,” he said. “A chat.”
“Jimmy too?”
Tynan flicked away the question with a quick movement of his hand.
“Don’t be fretting. It’s smarts that should be the basis of entitlement to comment, not rank alone. So don’t be kicking in the stall now.”
“I’ll be sure and phone you,” said Minogue. He felt pleased and bewildered. Tynan finished his coffee, rose and replaced his chair under the table. He looked down at the Inspector.
“Like the suit? There’s stripe to it but you’d need glasses to see it.”
Minogue issued a wink that he hoped might convey a sybarite’s approval. Tynan’s baleful gaze swept the room again.
“Well,” the Commissioner murmured. “I’m going to see if what some journalists write is true. That some Gardai are not, em, sensitive to Dubliners of lower socio-economic status.”
A swell of sympathy and liking swept over Minogue. He hoped that Tynan was not too isolated. “See you, John,” he called after him.