Minogue hummed along with the radio while he waited for Donnybrook to unjam itself. It was early in the afternoon for traffic jams, he thought. At least the sun had come out. An ambulance passed him, heading into town. A crash? Several teenagers in masks-one of Mick Jagger-trudged by carrying a shopping bag with the outlines of bottles straining at the plastic. Good day for pulling a bank job, thought the Inspector. The traffic moved. Minogue waved to a Guard directing traffic around a Toyota sports car which had taken down a lamp post on its way through the railings in front of a house. A youth with a sullen, pale face and a gash on his forehead sat in the back seat of the squad car. Joyriders, Minogue guessed. Were others hurt? The Guard was talking to himself and frowning. He didn’t wave back to Minogue.
The Inspector stopped in Donnybrook and quickly settled on a bottle of wine to celebrate the beginning of his break from work. Couldn’t be worse than the bottle of home-made plonk that Iseult’s boyfriend, Pat, had opened for dinner last week, the red stuff with the homemade label “Banshee.” Kathleen was on the phone when he turned the key in the hall door. “Maura,” she mouthed at him. “Matt’s just in the door,” she said. “Yes, that’s the job, come and go as you like…”
She handed the receiver to her husband. He exchanged it for the bottle of wine and raised his eyebrows. Kathleen shook her head.
“Down in the dumps again,” she whispered. “I told her we’d be down for sure tomorrow.”
Minogue tried to hide his irritation. He picked up one of the bars of chocolate that Kathleen had lined up for the Hallowe’en callers tonight.
“Hello, Maura, and how are you all below?”
“Hello, Matt. Arra you know how it is. We’re nearly swimming. The Stone Fields and Durrus are under water these three weeks. It’s fish we should be farming.”
A name for every field and ditch, Minogue remembered. He had his nail under the wrapper now.
“Was it ever any other way, Maura love?” he tried. The foil slid up under his thumb and chocolate showed. “And how’s Mick?”
“Well enough now. The joints are bad with him in the morning, what with the weather and the time of year. And of course there’s the age. Like they say, closer to the wood. There’s no avoiding that, is there? God has His own plans.”
“We’ll be down by tea-time tomorrow, Maura. Make sure you have a pack of cards in the house and a bit of meat.” Kathleen laughed, at his pronunciation of meat as mate, he believed.
“God, Matt, you’re a caution. But listen now. I phoned for a reason. It’s to tell you or Kathleen that there’s an envelope of stuff here for you. It’s from Mr Crossan, the man we talked to about Eoin’s predicament there…and he gave us the best advice. Very nice man, but his own way about things. Maybe you know him, do you?”
“The barrister Crossan?” He recalled seeing or hearing the name somewhere. Yes, with one of Kilmartin’s cronies, that was it. Grumbling about Crossan demolishing some case brought against an IRA man.
“The very one. It was his work that got the charges dropped against Eoin the next day.”
Maura’s voice dropped lower. Minogue imagined her shielding her words from someone passing in the hall, Mick most likely,
“Well, it came up in the course of a chat that you were a Guard, and, of course, in no time at all he knew your exact department. Very interested he was and all. Well, Matt, I don’t know how I should put this to you, I’m not much good at this…”
Minogue sensed the awkwardness betokened some transaction in the rural commerce of obligations felt and favours returned. He could feel Maura’s nervousness, the effort it had taken her to tell him, and his irritation disappeared.
“I’m not the sworn enemy of the legal profession, Maura. Officially, at any rate. What’s Crossan about here now?”
Her voice was almost a whisper now.
“He mentioned the name Jamesy Bourke to me. Do you remember him?”
“Bourkes out by Kilrannagh? Wasn’t there some trouble with them years ago?”
“That’s them. Jamesy’s the only one left. He was in prison these years. He only got out a few months ago and he’s living up above in the mother’s place since. It’s only a shed really. Walks the roads like Methuselah with the beard and a big stick he carries. Talks to no one except himself or his dog. They say he went cracked in prison. The locals’re afraid of him too.”
“Do you recall what he ended up in prison for?”
Maura’s reply came in a whisper. “He murdered a girl.”
Minogue placed the chocolate on his tongue.
“And that’s what Crossan wants to get in touch with me about?”
“Well, to make a long story short. Mr Crossan had left an envelope about it with me a week ago so’s I’d give it to you and you coming down. But he phoned today, asking would you be down soon-”
“Was he, em, in some class of a hurry with this, er…?”
She paused before replying. “Well, Matt, now he didn’t say as much, but…I think so. But if it’s any trouble to you, don’t have anything to do with it. I told Mr Crossan that you were a very busy-”
Minogue thought of her laughter, her radiant smile, the hospitality she had showered on them over the years. She and Kathleen had grown to be like sisters.
“Ah, you’re all right there, Maura, oul’ stock,” he said. “Don’t be worrying. Keep that thing out of the floods you have and give it to me tomorrow evening.”
“God bless, Matt!”
Kathleen watched her husband unwrap another chocolate.
“Leave a few for the children, can’t you.”
He rolled the foil into a ball, placed it on the telephone table and began flicking it about.
“Did you know anything about that?” he asked.
“The barrister fella? Yes I did. If you want my opinion, he put her in a corner. If I meet him, I’ll tell him to his face, too. They’re all the same, that mob.”
“What are you saying?”
“‘The best in the county, Mr Crossan,’ Maura tells me. Of course she went straight to his office in Ennis when Eoin was arrested. She would have sold the bloody farm if that was what it’d take to get Eoin out. As it turned out, this Crossan wouldn’t take any money from her.”
“So why are you dropping rocks on him?”
“I maintain that he knew all along that Maura was related to you and that he knew she’d feel under the obligation to him. That way she’d put him in touch with you. That’s the way country people are.”
“Tell me more about country people, Kathleen.”
Kathleen didn’t take the bait but examined her nails instead.
“Probably knew they were hard up for money as it was. Probably has some dirty work for a client that’s willing to pay him buckets of money.” She looked up from her nails. “Wants something under the table from you, no doubt,” she declared.
An IRA lawyer, Minogue reflected again, or so described by a disgruntled senior Garda friend of Kilmartin’s. Conniving afoot?
“Maybe I should give him a well-aimed kick so,” said Minogue. He reached for another chocolate. “And tell him it’s from you.”
The shot cracked in the dusk like a branch snapping. He laughed and lowered the gun.
“There’s a grand kick off this,” he said. “Not too much, and not too little.”
“Jesus Christ, Finbarr!” shouted the other man. “Don’t be such a fucking iijit! What the hell do you want to be doing that for?”
“You’ve had your bit of fun for the day. Why can’t I have mine?”
The other man, a little taller than the one with the pistol now dangling loosely at the ends of his fingers, bit back a retort. He swung the stock of the machine pistol back and stuck it in his armpit. Too short. Not meant to rest there? He stood up and slung the strap over his head before returning the stock to his armpit. He pulled the strap tight by shoving the gun forward. That’s more like it, he thought. He looked down in the grass by his feet where he had laid the plastic wrap and the ammunition clips which he had been filling.
“Was it good?” asked Finbarr.
“Was what good?”
Merry, heavy-lidded eyes met his. “The ride. Was she good today?”
“Shut up. I told you before about that.” He pulled the barrel down to feel the strap on his shoulder again. Good, steady. He spread his feet.
“Only asking.”
“Don’t ask. Mind your own business.”
His companion looked down into the bottle. “Very touchy today, aren’t we, Ciaran…darling?”
The other man ignored the gibe. Finbarr suddenly raised the Browning and loosed off another shot.
“You stupid fucking yob!” hissed Ciaran. He reached for the pistol but Finbarr turned and held it out of his reach. “Put it away and stop playing with it. Do you think it’s a bloody toy or something? Give it to me!”
His friend chortled, thumbed the safety and dropped it onto the plastic. He raised the bottle again.
“Well now, Ciaran. For a man who was supposed to have had a good time there, you seem awful jittery to me.”
“If I am a bit jittery, it’s because I’ve been watching you swallowing vodka and waving that gun around!”
He unhitched his gun and laid it carefully next to the pistol. As he stood stretching, he turned on his heels. Around him lay the Burren. Like the last place on earth, he thought. He had worked on the buildings in England for six years until the slump came. This is what he had wanted to come home to? Below him was the cottage they had been gutting and renovating for the new owners. They had been hired by Howard whose company acted as a go-between for the Germans who had bought the place. Do it right, Howard’s foreman had told them, and there’d be plenty more work like it.
“Might as well have a bit of crack,” said the one with the bottle. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not crack we’re about at the present time,” said the other. He squatted down beside the guns and began wrapping them and the clips in the plastic.
“Jesus, it’s not like we’re doing stuff that really needs doing by a certain time now, is it? I’m getting fed up waiting around. Breaking windows is all we’re about so far as I can see.”
The one wrapping the gun was a few years older than his companion. He concentrated on fingering the rubber bands over the ends of the package.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“When do we get to, you know-”
“To what?”
“Ah come on now, Ciaran. You know. Use the fucking things right.”
“Jesus, are you mad? You can’t just decide to go around the place Waving these without having thought it out carefully. We’ll do the German’s place tomorrow night like we planned, and that’s it for the time being. So don’t keep on asking me.”
He picked up the package and stood. It’d be dark inside of a couple of hours.
“What’s to stop us doing a bank job or something?”
Ciaran didn’t answer.
“Well, why not? It’s like playing with yourself instead of having a proper ride-”
The other man whirled around and hit him in the shoulder with his fist.
“Give over, for the love of Jases, Finbarr!” He waved the package. “Do you think we’re doing this for entertainment value, is it? You’re such a gobshite sometimes. Here I am, getting you in on this like I used to get you in in London, and look at you-”
“Hey! Don’t fucking preach at me. We’re in it together!”
“Well, don’t you be slagging me about her! And don’t be swilling that stuff on the job either!”
“What job?” He pointed the bottle toward the cottage. “Sure my work is done for today. I can take a drink if I want to. We’re not up to anything tonight. What’s the big deal, so?”
“Just don’t be firing off that gun here.”
“No one can hear us up here, only the birds-”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just a bad habit to treat it so casual is what I’m saying.”
“Bad habit! Hah! Look who’s telling me about bad habits!”
He tightened his grip on the package and watched his friend laugh and turn away. Something gave way in him then, and he felt the anger drop out of his chest. They had shared digs together, fallen into taxis pissed together, taken the mail-boat home together. His friend had only started going on the drink lately, really. No girlfriend…
“Well, is she still the holy terror she was the last time?” he heard him ask. If anyone was entitled to take the mickey out of him, it was Finbarr.
“She’s worse,” he murmured, the anger completely gone now. “I’m worn out.”
“Oh, you boy, you! Did she? Tell me, go on. What did she want this time?”
If only he’d act a bit more serious even.
“You’re such a cowboy, do you know that?” he muttered. “One of these days…”
He glared at his smiling, tipsy friend who stood now with his feet spread wide, swaying slightly while he looked out over the hedges to the rocky heights. Christ, he thought, the opposite of scenic. What the hell did foreigners want to visit here for?
“Come on,” he called out, anxious to shed the feeling which seemed ready to settle on him like the evening waiting close by. “Come on and we’ll put the stuff back. Get a pint in town.”
With the suburban Dublin traffic behind them, Minogue drove the Fiat fast along the Galway Road. He had had little trouble persuading Kathleen to go the Galway Road. Dinner in Galway city, a walk around the streets and then down to the farm by tea-time. Even with the new, widened stretches of roadway and the bypasses, he still considered Clare a long way off. The weeks of rain had deepened the colour of the grasses and left the air clear. He thought of last night’s Hallowe’en callers. It was either the effect of the Spanish wine or the fluorescent brightness of the cloth, but he had ranked a mummy as the best costume and given it the extra propitiation of a fifty-pence piece. How many years since Daithi and Iseult had gone out on Hallowe’en? Space blended with time as the countryside rolled by the Fiat. He thought of trips he had made all these years. When the kids were babies: that time Daithi had them up half the night with teething and he had forgotten to bring enough changes of clothes…
With his backside numb, Minogue piloted the Fiat through Athlone toward the River Shannon. He nudged Kathleen when they reached the middle of the bridge.
“Now we’re in business,” he said. “We’re in God’s country now, madam.”
She looked up from her magazine at the Shannon. Black and wide, it idled toward Limerick and the sea.
“‘To hell or to Connaught,’” she murmured.
“Typical Dublin gurrier remark,” he said, and nudged her harder. “It’s west of the Shannon where civilisation actually starts, woman.”
She flicked the magazine upright.
“Huh. You’re beginning to sound like Jimmy Kilmartin more and more.”
They had had a half-bottle of wine with a not-bad dinner of chicken in Galway city. He negotiated an hour in the hotel foyer with a pot of coffee and the paper and very nearly fell asleep, but Kathleen prodded him to go out in the streets. Minogue liked Galway very much. He sensed that this City of the Tribes, this mecca for the travelling people of the West of Ireland, was infused with a vigour and abandon due to the immensity of the Atlantic at the ends of its streets. Its visitors were in keen and anticipatory transit, passing a little time here in this portal city.
A poster of a starving child, black, naked and bloated, caught his eye in a shop window. Famine Stalks Africa Again was printed in fading black letters atop the poster. Large, glassy eyes returned the Inspector’s stare. On the bottom was the follow-up. “Famine knows no borders. Give to Concern this Sunday.” Hoey, he thought then. Cheer him up with a phone call from his home county. And gather up any gossip without having to fence with Kilmartin. He found a phone in the post office. Eilis answered.
“No, he hasn’t checked in. Might be the flu. Or something.”
The irony in her halting utterance suggested to him that she too believed Hoey might have been on a batter and was too hung over. Or still pissed. Try him at home? No. Talk straight to him when he got back to Dublin, before Jimmy Kilmartin came to the boil about it and jumped on Hoey first.
A rising wind in from the sea brought more clouds. Minogue carried the cake and bottle of sparkling wine Kathleen had bought to the car, and they headed out of the city. They crossed into Clare a half-hour later and Minogue turned inland off the Coast Road. The road narrowed and the Fiat began its gradual ascent through the Burren. As Minogue drove slowly through the limestone wilderness, the masses of stone began to exercise a subtle effect on him. He imagined that they were all there was to the world, that the earth had been petrified and worn down into this landscape. Not even glimpses of distant green lowlands between the hills broke the spell. He thought of the miles of caves beneath him, few of them mapped, which had been carved out by the underground waters. Hours and even days after rain, the further reaches of the caves flooded without warning, emerging as wells and ponds that appeared and drained enigmatically over days or weeks or years.
The votive wells and springs near the farm still flowed. His sister, home from Toronto on a visit several years ago, had brought her youngest, Kevin-a gangling, sceptical and embarrassed North American kid-to Tobar Dearg, the Red Well, for an asthma cure, he recalled. Next to the well was the cillin, a children’s burial ground. For many years Minogue had thought of asking Kathleen if they could rebury Eamonn here amongst this tight cluster of stones. He had never actually talked to her about it. The idea of exhuming their infant son, gone a quarter of a century now, and bringing that small coffin west across Ireland would be too much for her, he believed.
“Not enough earth to bury a man,” he murmured as they breasted a hill. “Not enough timber to hang him. Not enough water to drown him.”
“Name of God.” Kathleen elbowed him. She sat forward in the seat and looked hard at him.
“It’s just a saying about the Burren-”
“Can’t you come up with something a bit more, I don’t know…cheerful, man? Look up in the sky-the sun is shining. Finally get a bit of weather! Cheer up!”
Minogue nodded at the stricken uplands continuing to unfold around the car.
“Cheerful? All right. ‘Holy Mary of the Fertile Rock.’”
“Fertile Rock? What sense does that make?”
“That’s the dedication the monks put on Corcomroe Abbey back in the twelfth century or so-”
He felt the car slowing a little. A soft bump alerted him.
“Here, why are you stopping here?”
“We have a puncture. The back seat on my side.”
Kathleen followed him out onto the road and looked at the tyre. Minogue rummaged in the boot.
“Do you want help?” she asked.
“No, thanks.”
She stepped over to the remains of a drystone wall and looked through a gap between the ridges across Galway Bay at the Connemara mountains. Minogue bent to loosen the nuts before placing the jack. Aware of her watching him now, he stopped and looked over at her. A breeze caught her hair and swept it down over her forehead. She made to smile but a frown spread across her face instead. Her gaze wandered away to the heights inland. Worried, he thought. What was she thinking about?
One of the nuts was very tight and he paused several times to secure his grip. He felt himself being watched but, when he turned to Kathleen, her back was to him. He looked over the rocks. Nobody. The nut gave way suddenly and the wrench clattered onto the road.
“Mind yourself,” she called out, and turned back toward the uplands.
He stood up, stretched his back and rolled the spare wheel over. He eyed her while he tightened the nuts again. She looks as if she sees something up there that she doesn’t want to see, he thought. Suddenly aware of his eyes on her, she looked over and shivered.
“God, it’s like a different continent or something.” Her voice trailed off but her frown remained.
Guided by the light from the kitchen window, the Inspector stepped into the cobbled farmyard. He had forgotten how dark a country night could be. He hoped that the cutting night air would banish the headache he felt coming on. It was only half nine. He shivered as he walked over the stones toward the car. He stopped by the gate and let the memories swirl around him. A breeze hissed through the hawthorn still rooted by the gate. A dog barked twice in the far distance and then fell silent. Minogue shivered again. Fretting breezes and gusts batted turf-smoke from the kitchen range down into the farmyard around him. The sweet smell almost warmed him. The back door of the farmhouse opened and light spilled across the yard. Eoin came out into the yard, wrestling his way into a coat.
“The da’s just getting himself ready,” Eoin said.
Minogue sat into the back seat of the Opel. Eoin left the door half-opened and the interior light stayed on. Minogue studied his nephew’s profile for several moments. The same high cheekbones as his mother, the same thick, wavy hair even, but he had his father’s thin lips. Even Mick’s mannerisms, Minogue reflected dispiritedly.
“That was great ye came down now,” Eoin said. “Mamo has been a bit odd this last while.”
“She’s had it tough this last while, all right,” said Minogue.
Eoin turned in his seat. “How do you mean, like?”
Minogue considered backing away.
“You said she’s had it tough. Is there something she’s been keeping from us here-”
“No. I meant the farming, of course.”
“True for you, Uncle Matt. True for you.”
“And that gun in the boot of your car,” Minogue added. He heard his nephew draw in a breath.
“I wondered if you’d bring that up. I had no idea that Liam was carrying a gun in his bag.”
“If you had known, would you have kicked him out of the car?”
“Think what you like, Uncle Matt. I don’t have anything to do with that kind of stuff.”
Minogue thought of the fire glowing in the Aga in the kitchen, Maura laughing, a hand of cards maybe. Tell stories, a glass of whiskey. But Kathleen had dispatched him to the pub with a twenty-pound note to loosen tongues. And that bloody envelope was still lying on the hall table for him.
“Tell me something, Eoin,” he began. “Have ye considered selling a bit off, maybe? A few acres. Who knows, you could probably get planning permission for houses or something.”
“We’re farmers here,” Eoin declared. “We put the food on your tables up in Dublin.”
“You and some poor divils growing onions in the arse end of Spain, you mean.”
Anger flashed out of Eoin’s eyes.
“With all due respect, Uncle Matt, what do you know and you up in Dublin this thirty years?” His voice rose, “Dublin’s a different world entirely. Maybe you’ve forgotten who we are here.”
“Forgotten what?”
Exasperation rippled across Eoin’s face.
“The family farm and all that it means. ’Twas the country people brought us our freedom in ’21. The people of Clare and plenty more that won our land back from the landlords in Parnell’s day. We took pikes in our hands when we had no guns. We deserve every blade of grass that’s under our feet.”
Eoin’s eyes strained as they looked into his uncle’s. Whatever he saw there didn’t seem to be the right answer. He blinked and returned to tapping the steering wheel. A speech worthy of his father, Minogue thought, as Mick Minogue stepped awkwardly out into the yard and began his laboured, sideways walk to the car. He thought of the afternoon’s drive through the Burren. Notions of property or boundaries seemed to falter and then fade entirely on the slopes of the desolate hills. Minogue suddenly felt his nephew’s angry bewilderment as something familiar now, without menace.
“I farmed these fields, Eoin,” he murmured. “It was hard then, too.”
“All right,” Eoin said. “So you know what it’s like to see some bloody foreigner with pucks of money come in and snap up scraps of fields that’d mean the world to us. They put up bloody holiday homes… They’re killing our way of life. I don’t want to end up making their beds and cooking their dinners.”
Mick Minogue let himself slowly down into the passenger seat. The Inspector again studied his nephew’s face. Its frown of sincerity and anger, regret then as the brows lifted, moved Minogue. Dublin is a different world? The cold coming in under his arms and along his legs made Minogue shudder. Eoin talked while he drove the three miles into the coastal village of Portaree. It was a conversation that his passengers neither wanted to keep alive nor let die. So-and-so had sold out their twenty acres. Talk was that the buyer had planning permission for holiday homes. A folk village and museum was to be built nearby, too. At least the buyer was local, Eoin added.
“Who?” asked Minogue.
“Who else?” said Eoin. “Dalcais. Tidy Howard’s outfit. Dan Howard runs it now.”
“With the blessing of that bloody association, of course,” Mick grunted.
“Which?”
“The PDDA,” said Eoin. “The Portaree and District Development Association.”
“There’s one bloody farmer in that outfit,” Mick said between his teeth. “Townies grubbing for money. It’s a long way from Tidy Towns they’ve come.”
Dan Howard, Senior, had put Portaree on the map years ago by promoting it in Ireland’s Tidy Town contest, and the village had won the title several times since. Window boxes and fresh paint had been taken for granted in the town for two decades now. In tribute to Howard’s astute business sense in connecting tidiness with tourism with development, the local people had wryly tagged him with his honorific, Tidy.
“I didn’t know Tidy was gone,” said Minogue.
“Oh no,” said Mick. “Not gone to glory yet. He’s in a nursing home after a stroke. They say he’s lying up in the bed like a vegetable or something. They’re not sure if he has his wits about him. Poor divil. For all you might have said ag’in him when he was in the whole of his health…”
The Opel shuddered on a pothole and Minogue glimpsed his brother’s grimace. The first lights of Portaree flared on the windscreen.
A craft studio, a restaurant with candles and American Express signs in its windows and a big grocery shop slipped by their car. A flux of memories took over Minogue’s mind. Save for market days and Saturdays, his Portaree had been like a town asleep. He remembered cycling in for pints, cycling home again, drunk and dreamy, sometimes bitter, with escape carved on his heart. Mick seemed to read his brother’s thoughts.
“Money in town now,” he said. “We’d fork souls into the mouth of hell if the money were right.”
The pub was half-full. Faces turned to the Minogues and heads nodded greetings. They drew up to the bar. Minogue noted the brass foot-rail, the oil-lamps hanging from the wall. The dismal shebeen of his own youth had been made over several times by the Howards. A barman unknown to Minogue raised his eyebrows at him. Before Minogue had asked Mick and Eoin what they would drink, a fat man turned on his stool by the bar. He cocked his cap back on his head, settled it and greeted Mick.
“Gob now, Mick Minogue, is it yourself that I’m seeing in a pub? It must be the Christmas.”
He chortled and swallowed from a pint glass of beer. The barman looked on, bemused and careful. The man’s face put Minogue in mind of a pear, his nose pitted and large. The recessed eyes twinkled and the fat man spoke in a tone of mock earnestness.
“Please God, we’ll see more of you so then, Mick?”
Minogue gave the barman a look sharp enough to cause him to elbow up from the counter.
“Jamesons,” he said. “Two of ’em. Don’t make a cod of them with ice or anything. Two bottles of stout for comfort on top of them. Pint of lager. Please.”
“Are you here for the meeting, is it now, Mick?” asked the fat man.
“What meeting are you talking about?”
“Beyond in the dining room. Master Howard’s in town tonight. The Development Association.”
“The Dan Howard re-election committee, you mean,” said Eoin.
The fat man’s cheeks made slits of his eyes when he grinned.
“God, they haven’t pulled the wool over your eyes, Eoin,” he said. “Wide-awake you are, boy.”
He turned his attention to Minogue and squinted out from the pouches around his eyes. The Inspector folded his wife’s twenty and handed it to the barman.
“I know you from somewhere… Ah, yes! You’re the brother, the Guard up in Dublin. Wouldn’t know you from Adam if I wasn’t seeing you here next to the brother. Wouldn’t know you at all.”
Minogue took custody of the whiskeys and the bottles of stout.
“Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t want to,” he said.
The fat man regrouped with a smile and a nod. The barman changed the channel on the television. Minogue followed Eoin to a table and sat next to his brother.
“Don’t mind that half-wit,” said Mick. “He’s Deegan from up the Saint’s Quarter. ‘As I roved out.’ Does odd jobs for the Howards. Since Tidy’s gone, I don’t think there’s much love lost between Dan Howard and your man here. Always trying to get a rise out of one or the other of us.”
Dimly the Inspector recalled a family of Deegans. He rolled a soupspoon’s worth of whiskey around under his tongue and then nodded it back to his tonsils. The heat detonated in his chest first. Minogue, one: early winter in the west of Ireland, nil. A man took an accordion from a case at a nearby table. Good, thought Minogue as the whiskey crept further through his intestines. Now he had an excuse for Kathleen: There was a session, my dear. How was he supposed to fob off advice on Mick or Eoin?
The musicians were soon loose and free with their instruments. A teenager with a pony-tail and the faint and distracted smile Minogue associated with expert musicians started to fiddle. The accordion player began to slip in the extra notes and flourishes which are the insignia of Clare composition. The bar began to fill. Deegan had left the bar for a seat next to the fireplace where he drank with two younger men. Minogue spotted him looking toward their table once. During a break in the music, Mick wanted to talk about hurling. Minogue made a big effort to appear interested, but the music and the drink had set his mind rambling. Several times he glanced down at his empty whiskey glass, but Mick didn’t get the hint. His own glass had remained half-full for the past twenty minutes. Mick’s hands had closed on one another as he talked and his hands worked slowly at stretching the fingers. Many would never straighten again, Minogue knew. God, another drink, he decided.
“Well, look,” said Eoin, and leaned sideways to see around standing patrons. “The man himself.”
Mick broke off his monologue, looked up and wrinkled his nose. Minogue caught a glimpse of several men as they came through the door and made their way toward the bar. A hand rose and waved across the heads of the crowd at someone unseen to Minogue.
“Who?” he said to Eoin.
“Dan Howard and the crowd from the PDDA. Howard makes a point of dropping in here for a jar after the meetings. Oh, and here’s the wife. Jacqueline Kennedy, I heard her called the other day.”
“A state visit,” grunted Mick. “His own damn pub and all.”
Some memory came faintly to Minogue, but it disappeared before he could place it. She had straight white-blonde hair, lately trimmed, framing a ruddy, tanned face. The Inspector was observing a woman who looked after herself, who had money and plenty of outdoor pursuits to make light of her years. Horsey maybe, he thought, with that fresh-faced, American sort of health. She wore a green loden over knee-length boots. A burrowing presence low under his ribs seemed to grow still. Confusion snared his thoughts tight; he realised that he was staring at her. From her gaze the Inspector knew that she was well aware of eyes on her. He watched her shrug off her coat. His throat was suddenly dry. He took a breath and tried to swallow.
“Never passes up the chance of shaking a few hands toward the next election,” said Mick. “He has the music organised for the same night as the PDDA meetings. Cute hoor, by God.”
Dan Howard was six feet tall but looked even taller in his double-breasted suit. Black curly hair tinted with grey sat over his rosy, dimpled face. His eyes twinkled, his smile was steady and wide. Howard’s hand strayed to his chest and searched out his tie, brushing it tighter inside his jacket. He shook hands with a young couple sitting at the bar and smiled at the musicians. One of them hoisted a glass in return. Minogue watched Dan Howard’s impish, benevolent gaze sweep around the room. His winks and waves continued. He gave a thumbs-up and a gleeful wink to someone Minogue could not see.
“See the little fella under his arm,” said Eoin. “He’s a German. A bloody millionaire. He flies over every month for these meetings. I’m not joking you.”
Minogue caught sight of a white-haired man with heavy, hornrimmed glasses on a head that seemed larger than it needed to be. Howard’s wife wore a loden, he remembered. A gift, maybe.
“Fell in love with the place. Yes, he’s taken a special interest in our little corner of the world.” Eoin’s sarcasm brought Minogue’s eyes to his nephew’s.
“Spillner. He brings people here every now and then to buy places. Clare’s ambassador in Germany.”
Minogue looked over again at the group by the bar. Howard was still looking around the crowd. His eyes lingered on Minogue as though he were trying to recall a name to go with the Inspector’s face, and he smiled broadly. Minogue nodded back. Someone handed Howard a glass of whiskey. The German had made his way over to the musicians and was talking animatedly to them.
Howard moved away from the bar and worked his way around the tables. He paused by one to shake hands with an elderly man. He inclined over another to listen to a joke, his smile broader with anticipation. His eyes focussed on Minogue while he listened. He showed perfect, even teeth when he laughed. The fiddle player drew his bow across the strings, set his jaw and launched into a reel. Spillner pushed at his glasses, laid his glass down and began clapping.
Mick eased himself more upright in his seat and grunted.
“Look at him, would you, for the love of God.”
The music had restored Minogue, renewed his thirst. He stood and made his way through the crowd. Damn it all, he thought, he’d do his best to spend the twenty-quid fee his wife had given him for parleying with Mick and Eoin. Danger money. He watched the barman uncapping the bottles of stout.
“So how’s Dublin?” called out the barman.
“Ah, it’s all right. A bit like Mars by times. But I like it.”
The barman shrugged and turned to the till. The fiddle wailed high over the guitar now and Minogue’s blood began to race with the music. His foot began rehearsing in miniature the steps to a Clare Set. Howard was still on the move. Minogue could not locate Howard’s wife, but as he stepped away from the bar he spotted her sitting next to the German. While he clapped vigorously she was looking at the musicians with a faint smile. She glanced over suddenly and returned Minogue’s gaze for several moments. The Inspector felt the soft compression about his chest again. A nudge on his arm from another patron drew him around to face the bar. The barman was shouting at him over the music.
“Your change!”
Minogue returned to the table and fended off money held out by Eoin. He wanted an excuse to stand up so that he could see her again. What was it about her that looked so familiar? Maybe she had been inspecting him to see if she could peg him from a family likeness. He thought of how her shoulders had rolled when she had slipped off the loden. And him like the world’s biggest iijit standing there, forgetting his change, staring at her. He took a gulp from his glass.
It was then that the Inspector noticed the customers moving away from the door. The man who now stood in the doorway seemed immune to the ruckus around him. He wore a thick black workman’s coat, a donkey jacket, with the collar turned up. Though he was tall and wiry, his shoulders were hunched under a mop of white hair. His beard was still almost completely black. The Inspector shifted to get a better angle and saw the plastic shopping bags dangling from the man’s hands. Others in the crowd had begun to look toward the new arrival now. The barman looked up from a glass he was filling and frowned. Several people edged closer to the bar. Minogue looked back at the bearded man. There was something more to him than that furtive alertness which Minogue associated with people who were cracked. In the animal shyness and caution was defiance.
The barman left the glass on the counter half-filled and lifted the hinged countertop. Men around the bar made way for him. The bearded man noted him coming toward him but returned to looking around the groups in the bar. The fiddle player left the guitar and the accordion to account for the melody and began to soar and fall around it. The German millionaire was smiling broadly, swaying from side to side on his stool. The barman’s face was set in an expression of resolute regret as he talked to the bearded man. The bearded man kept looking at the faces in the pub. The barman’s hands went to his hips and he nodded toward the door. The bearded man looked at him for a moment, seemed about to say something, but pivoted. Minogue saw that the bags seemed to be crammed with newspapers. So still had the collie been in the shadows behind that Minogue was surprised when it stirred. Minogue looked up from the animal to find the man’s eyes staring at him. The intensity held his eyes for a moment before returning to the barman’s. The barman nodded at the door again and shrugged. The bearded man left. The collie trotted out, its eyes locked on the man’s boots. Minogue looked to their wake until the door swung back, then sipped from his whiskey. Ah, good heart, he tried to decoy himself. The drop of malt, the soft drift into comfort: there’s always whiskey.
Mick leaned over and murmured into Minogue’s ear.
“That poor divil. Your man there, the go-by-the-wall. You know him.”
Mick shifted slowly in his chair and Minogue saw his brother’s face seize with pain as he moved.
“That envelope back at the house,” Mick added, sucking in air.
“Was that Jamesy Bourke?”
“None other.”
Minogue watched as Mick rubbed under his chin with the back of his hand.
“There’s a family that’s scattered to the four winds. The mother only died a while ago. Three year. I tell a lie. Four. Four come the Christmas. She lived there alone and died of a broken heart. Jamesy was let out under guard for the funeral and he was gone again until a few months ago.”
“Let out,” Minogue repeated.
“Don’t you remember that fire? The dead girl? A Canadian girl? I suppose it’s ten or twelve years or more now. She was burned to death in a cottage she was renting. It was Jamesy set the place on fire and she inside. A love thing that went sour on him. He got a life sentence as I recall.”
Minogue thought of the envelope he had dropped into the suitcase back at the farm. Crossan, the barrister, was working in some capacity for Jamesy Bourke. Something lurched into his thoughts then. Had Bourke known he’d be here tonight? Had he come to talk to him?
“I heard he lost his mind in prison,” Mick murmured. “Took a knife to a warder and had time tacked on to his sentence for it…”
“But he’s-?”
“Ah, he has medication and that.” Mick flicked his head. “So far, so good, I suppose. No run-ins with anyone. Yet. But there’s plenty of people didn’t want him coming back here at all. They cross the street or turn around rather than have to pass him. The poor divil. Lonely there by himself. There’s only Jamesy and his dog left above in the cottage. Very fond of the dog. You’d hear him talking away to the dog and they walking the roads, the two of them. It was the mother, God rest her, scraped that little house out of the farm after she was rid of it.”
Mick shrugged and began massaging his hands again.
“There was bad luck on that family, there’s no doubt,” he added.
Minogue stood and began to thread his way toward the toilet. Dan Howard was still on the move, shaking hands with a man just in the door of the pub. When he returned Howard was gone. The musicians’ faces looked redder but more determined, but neither the German nor Mrs Howard sat next to them now. Newcomers occupied the table, faces vaguely familiar to Minogue. He nodded at them and smiled, trying to place them, believing that he knew the family at least. He sat down next to his brother with faint dismay still hanging in his mind. Eoin raised his glass and tipped it against his uncle’s.
“Your health, now, Uncle Matt, and all belonging to you.”
The edges of the road glistened under the streetlamps and the night air was astir with the breeze in off the sea. Minogue felt its presence as it rolled and lapped up to the shore below the village. He paused on the threshold of the pub and watched a rain so fine as to be almost mist bloom under the rim of the streetlamps. The door of the pub hissed closed behind him, swallowing the talk within. He listened more keenly now, but he still couldn’t be sure that it was the hush of the sea he was hearing. The smell of seaweed from the harbour, mingled with turf-smoke, thickened the air around him. Eoin blundered out the door, nearly pitching him into the street. “Sorry, Uncle Matt.”
Eoin fiddled with the car keys and Mick paused to blow his nose. Minogue heard a dog bark up the street. A man laughed raucously somewhere. The dog howled as though struck and then began barking again. In between barks, Minogue heard laughs and a guffaw. He walked beyond the car and stopped by the forecourt of a garage recessed in from the street. From there he saw Deegan poke at the shopping bag. Bourke held the bag of newspapers tighter. The streetlamp reflected off his eyes as they darted from Deegan to the other two. The dog made another run at Deegan but moved to avoid a boot from one of Deegan’s cronies.
“What’s in the bag, professor?” Deegan called out over the dog’s growling. “Dirty pictures, hah?”
Minogue remembered that same tone of bogus kindliness in the sadistic teachers of his youth. Jamesy Bourke wrapped his arms around the bag and his eyes fastened on Minogue. Eoin and Mick now stood beside him. Deegan caught sight of the Minogues and turned to face them. The two men with him, young, with the slack smiles of men who had been drinking, turned also.
“A man can’t stop and water his horse without some quare fella lying in wait and looking on,” said Deegan. “Isn’t that a divil?”
He glanced at the collie and then raised his arms and hissed. The dog recoiled, barking furiously. Deegan laughed. Still chuckling, he ambled by Mick. The two younger men followed.
“Tell me something,” Minogue said as they passed. “Is it just the Hallowe’en or are ye like this every night of the year?”
Deegan slowed his jaunty gait. Minogue noted how thick he was in silhouette. One of the men’s shoes scuffed on the edge of the footpath and he took an extra step to steady himself.
“Ah, the polls down from the big city, bejases,” Deegan drawled. “Enjoy your little holiday now, can’t you, and then go home to Dublin without worrying about us humble folk down here. We can look after ourselves.”
The Inspector turned back to where Bourke had been standing. He was gone.
Minogue laid the envelope on the chest of drawers and began to finger his laces loose. Kathleen looked out from behind a paperback.
“I think I remember it now,” she said.
“He was released just a few months ago.”
Kathleen retreated behind the book. Her tipsy husband stared at the picture on the cover. A girl with long hair and her dress off her shoulder had her leg around a Robert Redford type inclined over her. Smoke-puffing cannon and soldiers busied themselves in the background. He stood and let the trousers drop, sat down on the bed and drew the trousers around his heels. Was it cold in Dublin too? Hoey. Where was Aine again? Zimbabwe. Hot there, no doubt.
“Not a word out of him,” Minogue murmured. “Just walked off.” The damp air brushed against his bare legs. The room had been his parents’ and the wallpaper was a half-dozen layers thick.
“Who? Mick?”
“Jamesy Bourke. I thought he might come over and say something. But he just took off, himself and the dog.”
Kathleen laid the book face down.
“God, can’t you stop reminding me about that fella? You come home with a few jars on you and the first thing, you want to tell me all the gory details about it.”
“Wait a minute there. You’re one of the ones helped set me up for this little ‘job’ that bloody barrister Crossan wants me to do.”
“Did you talk to Eoin or Mick about the future even? No, you didn’t.”
“There was music.”
“There was music. Of course there was music. There’s always something getting in the way.”
“I can’t just waltz in and start talking about selling the farm.”
“Maybe not, but here you are, to top it all off, sitting there this last half-hour reading that stuff in the envelope. Some kind of a lunatic. God, it gives me the creeps, man.”
“What time did Crossan phone again?”
“Half an hour after you left for the pub. Maura asked me first. I told her to tell him you worked better around food. Twelve o’clock, the Old Ground in Ennis, tomorrow.”
“I was obviously working under the delusion that we were on a holiday of sorts here,” he muttered. “But you seem to have my schedule well in hand. The set-up at the pub with Mick and Eoin-”
“Ah go on, would you. I gave you twenty quid to kill the pain there.”
“-and now you’re setting up appointments with Crossan-”
Kathleen pursed her lips and shook the book as though to wring more satisfaction from it.
“Why don’t you go back to reading what he sent you in the envelope,” she murmured. “Can’t you always say no to him?”
“Shit,” he whispered. He felt the pliers still in his back pocket as he hunkered down. Be a really stupid thing to be running and drop them and have the bloody Guards find them and trace the tool to them. He drew them out, put them in his jacket pocket and buttoned it.
“What?” said the other man.
“Nothing.”
He had snipped the phone line easily at the gable-end of the house where it came down from the pole. Scurrying back toward the ditch, however, he had slipped in the wet grass. He was angry and embarrassed at looking clumsy. He searched his companion’s face for any sign of a smile. As if he himself had been drinking and deserved a going-over this time-a taste of his own medicine. His companion waited, preoccupied, the gun under his jacket. He patted the pocket to feel the pliers secure now and looked back toward the car they had parked in a recess by the wall. He could just make out the dark strip of its roof.
“Jesus. Pitch-black tonight,” said the one with the gun. His friend was pleased to hear the tension in his voice. No drink on the job tonight. Maybe he was coming around at last.
“That’s because you were looking at the lights in the house. Your eyes’ll get used to it in a while.”
“They’d better…”
“We’re gone inside of a minute now, right?” The other man nodded. “Hold it up near as you can to the sight, remember. There can’t be slack in the strap. Okay?”
“Okay, chief.”
“Otherwise it could fly all over the place or go high.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Shut up with the smart remarks. Have you set it?”
“‘Course I have.”
“Check it-”
“I did fucking check it! Ten times! Give over, can’t you, for Christ’s sake.”
“No closer than about twenty feet now,” the other went on, his voice strained with the effort to remain patient. “I don’t want you hitting anyone in there. That’s not the idea.”
“I heard you the first time,” snapped the one with the gun. “Wouldn’t want the little man to be getting hurt now, would we?”
He took the gun out from under his jacket, shouldered the strap and stood up.
“Just let me get on with it, for fuck’s sakes! Go on back to the car, you.”
The curtains were drawn in both lighted windows. The gunman looked back down at his companion.
“Go on, fuck you! Don’t be worrying! Git!”
The other moved off reluctantly. He reached the wall and looked back toward the house. Then he cleared the wall and got into the car. It took enormous effort to control his urge to stay by the wall and make sure his companion wasn’t screwing up. Both windows in the Escort were rolled down. He stuck his head out and looked up at the sky. A patch of stars had appeared. He looked across the passenger side then. No sound. Christ, he had screwed up. He looked at his watch and the jolt of fright beat hard in his chest. Four minutes already. Lonely as the place was, a car could come by. He mentally reviewed the way home and tested his night vision by staring at the outlines of the walls. He knew he’d have to drive up to a mile with the lights off, and smartly too.
Jesus, do it, or get to hell out of there! He swore and slapped the passenger seat. He was about to get out and head for the cottage when he heard the hammering stutter of the gun. His heart leapt. Not too loud, he thought with relief. Glass tinkled and what sounded like a ricochet followed. The silence after the shots seemed even deeper. He strained to hear running feet. The burst had been about two seconds. He hadn’t given in to the temptation to be a cowboy about it. The gunman came over the wall wide-eyed, his teeth showing. The driver had the door pushed open. The gun clattered against the door and the chortling man fell into the seat, breathing hard. The driver had the engine started. He let in the clutch and moved smoothly away onto the dark road.
“Make sure the safety’s on.”
“I did it already before I headed back,” the other whispered breathlessly, and began giggling. He fought to get his breath back as it turned to laughter. “Just after you went, the light in the jacks went on. Here’s me chance, I said to meself!”
He paused to laugh again.
“Keep it down!” said the driver, his eyes boring into the darkness ahead.
“I gave him a few seconds to get the trousers down-ha ha ha-and then I gave him the surprise of his life, so I did. Oh, Jases, such timing! Perfect!”
“You didn’t shoot in the window of the jacks, did you?”
He wanted to clatter his companion but he couldn’t take his eyes from the road.
“No, I didn’t! Don’t be getting yourself in a state. I went for the living room. But you can imagine the state your man is in now, ha ha ha…!”
He laughed again and couldn’t seem to regain control. The driver smiled. His passenger drew up his knees and panted, helpless with laughter. Relief, he knew, must have been very tense, of course, he must have been. He’d done all right-they’d done all right.
“All right, all right,” he said. Ahead he could make out the coast road. “Don’t get carried away now. Let’s drop it off.” He nodded toward the submachine gun resting in the passenger’s lap.
The gunman turned suddenly calm and his eyes grew wide again.
“That’s some gun, that,” he said with whispered fervour. “It’s the best fucking thing since-”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“What are you fretting about? We did great. Don’t be fretting, for Jases’-”
“I’ll fret if I fucking want to!”
The sudden return of his anger surprised the driver. He immediately tried to lighten it.
“Someone needs to fret about you, you bollocks,” he murmured.
His passenger folded the stock and laughed. The driver turned the headlights on and sped up.
“Sounds to me like you need another bit of how’s-your-father… Wouldn’t you try a pint or something instead?”
The driver felt some relief taking the place of his anxiety. Why get annoyed now?
“Are you buying, is it, for a change?”
“And fuck you too,” grinned the passenger, and he slapped the driver hard on the thigh.