A bad patch of road outside Nenagh jostled Hoey’s lolling head against the headrest. He elbowed up slowly and licked his teeth. Minogue looked at his watch. Two and a half hours from Dublin: that was fast.
“Sorry,” said Minogue. “But that’s Tipperary County Council for you. Did you sleep last night?”
“I did, I think,” said Hoey. “Better than the other night, I can tell you. These bloody pills. Stayed up awhile talking to Kathleen. It’s too bad she didn’t want to come down…”
He looked out at the fields. It was midday now and sluggish clouds had moved in from the coast. Minogue had expected rain since Portlaoise.
“Nenagh,” Hoey whispered. He stretched and felt his pocket for the orange bottle of pills.
“That’s it. We’ll be in Ennis before you know it.”
The Inspector had made several phone calls before leaving Dublin. Kilmartin, still in his kitchen, hadn’t argued with him as much as he had expected. Eilis reported that no call had been logged to the Squad yet about Bourke. Minogue had phoned Crossan and arranged to call to his office by dinner-time.
“Look at that,” said Hoey.
By a bend in the road Minogue spotted what he took to be a County Council crew working with little vigour to remove slogans spraypainted onto a wall. Hoey turned in his seat as the car passed them.
“EC Robbers Beware. What’s the other one? Irish Land for Irish People.”
“Maybe they should write their slogans in German or Dutch or whatever,” Minogue murmured.
Forty minutes later he was accelerating out the Ennis Road from Limerick.
Ennis had changed, he believed. The town of bright streets and busy shops was now slow, dulled by clouds and stillness. The streets were almost deserted. Not every day can be market day, he tried to reason with himself. That logic didn’t gain any ground against his impressions. The air felt heavy. The walls of the buildings seemed to be thicker, their windows turned inward. He reached Bank Place and drew into the curb by Crossan’s office. He touched the horn and looked up at the windows along the terrace. Crossan appeared at one and waved once. A minute later, he closed the door behind him, paused to throw on a raincoat and swept down the steps toward the Fiat.
Minogue introduced Hoey.
“Let’s go to the Garda Station first,” said Crossan.
“Have you heard more about Spillner?” Minogue asked.
“Well, I don’t know if he got bail yet.”
“I’d expect him to be held over for even having the gun,” said Minogue.
“Word is that Tom Russell, the Super in Clare, has asked Dublin for new commando-type outfits to patrol the place,” said Crossan. “The ones trained to eat their children and run through walls with their heads.”
Minogue crossed the bridge and turned down the cul-de-sac toward the Garda Station. He debated telling Crossan about his run-in with the Special Branch out at the farm but decided against it.
“So Russell and Co. haven’t phoned your mob for expertise,” Crossan went on. “Maybe he lost your number, do you think?”
Minogue parked behind a black Mercedes. Crossan squinted at the CD plate on the grille.
“Look at the shine off that car, will you,” he said. “Blind a beggar, so it would.”
A chauffeur stepped around one of the gateposts that formed the entry to the yard of the Station and began to study the dowdy Fiat and its passengers.
“A fiver says that’s down from the German Embassy in Dublin,” said Crossan. “Herr Spillner being the big-noise industrialist back in the fatherland.”
Minogue plucked the key out of the ignition and nodded at the chauffeur, a well turned out man in his thirties, thick-set without looking at all flabby.
“ Guten tag,” said Crossan. The chauffeur stood with his feet spread and nodded.
The lawyer strode down the short avenue and sprang, it seemed to Minogue, through the architraved door into the public office. A tall Guard with a bony nose and a flushed complexion looked up and greeted Crossan before allowing his eyes to search Hoey’s features. God, thought Minogue, Hoey probably looks like a suspect they were bringing to a lock-up. The Guard studied Minogue’s card for several seconds.
“Are ye expected, now?”
“We’re here to see Sergeant Ahearne,” said Crossan.
The Guard tugged at his tunic to straighten it under his belt.
“Hold on a minute, yes,” he said. “He’s on the premises, I believe.”
With a shy smile the Guard turned tail and went through a door behind the counter. Two Guards ambled in the door, laughing, from the yard.
“How’s Alo?” asked the older one. He had ginger hair and pale, tired eyes still full of humour after the joke he had been exchanging with his mate.
“I’ve been better,” said Crossan.
Ginger-hair smiled at Hoey.
“Did Alo do that to you?”
A Guard in the lighter blue tunic of a Superintendent came through the door into the public office. For several moments, Minogue could not grasp what was going on. The Superintendent’s eyes had been on Minogue’s from the moment he had appeared around the door. The two Guards in from patrol stopped abruptly, straightened and looked from the Superintendent to Sergeant Ahearne following. Behind Ahearne came the desk-officer who dared a look toward Minogue before looking away. Minogue’s thinking still lagged behind his awareness that he had walked into an ambush.
Superintendent Thomas Russell of the County Clare Division of the Garda Siochana was fifty-three years on earth. He retained a full head of crinkly hair which flowed back from a heavily lined forehead. The hair reminded Minogue of a child’s drawing of ocean waves. Two unfashionable patches of sideburn hair high on Russell’s cheeks hinted at an inflexibility. Vanity, Minogue guessed. Look at me, I am fierce. I can grow hair right up under my eyes. Thick eyebrows couldn’t deliver any softer, owlish aspects to this warrior’s face. Minogue wondered if Russell’s wide face with the thrusting tufts and the incongruously small features looked this impassive as a matter of course.
“Gentlemen,” said Russell. “Will you step into this room here?”
The trio were ushered in ahead of Ahearne and Russell. Ahearne, an athlete run to fat after resting on laurels probably twenty years old, but soft on his feet yet, pulled out chairs. Russell nodded as introductions were made. Then he opened with a weak facsimile of humour.
“Well. To find Jim Kilmartin’s boys here in Ennis. Who’d have imagined our good fortune?”
Minogue did not mistake the tone. He wondered what Russell being here had to do with the Mercedes bearing CD plates outside.
“I’m acting for the deceased,” said Crossan. “I met the Inspector socially and I called him for advice. He was acquainted with Bourke.”
Russell gave Crossan a blank look.
“Half the county was well acquainted with Jamesy Bourke, I believe,” said Russell.
Minogue looked into the flat face and the tiny eyes which hardly moved.
“This man Spillner shot him the once?” Minogue asked.
“The once, yes,” Ahearne replied. “But with two barrels.”
“And killed him outright?”
“Very much so,” said Ahearne. He shifted slightly in his chair, drawing a squeak from the vinyl as he issued a sympathetic nod.
“How far away from Bourke was he when he-”
Russell raised his hand.
“Inspector. You appear to be launching an investigation here. Sergeant Ahearne is, in point of fact, the investigating officer. He is already in possession of sufficient material to pursue the case to its conclusion.”
Minogue looked at Ahearne. The sergeant blinked and rubbed his hands together once.
“That’s great,” said Minogue.
“We’d like to talk to this Spillner man,” said Crossan.
“Ah, Mr Crossan,” Russell said with exaggerated civility. “In what capacity, now?”
“As counsel for Jamesy Bourke.”
“He retained you, did he?”
“As a friend, then.”
“A friend? With all due respect now, Mr Crossan,” said Russell, leaning in slightly, “this is a delicate enough matter. There’s a foreign national involved. There’s the possibility of hob-lawyers-no aspirations on your profession, now-trying to make something of this business. The issue of land, I mean. Now, I don’t see how you can help the investigation by interviewing Mr Spillner-”
“ Herr Spillner,” said Crossan.
Russell fixed a stare on the barrister before resuming.
“I don’t see how you can help us by interviewing this man. All the expertise and training, well, we have them at hand. The Inspector here can assure you of that, of the professionalism and training we have here on the Force.”
Russell paused to raise his eyebrows as he looked at Minogue.
“The County Coroner has provided us with a very clear picture of what happened, and what Mr Spillner has told us accords very closely with that report. It’s a tragic event. But the atmosphere in parts of the county, what with hooligans with guns and their heads full of slogans, well… I would tend to lay some of the blame at the feet of those people for helping to make things so strained.”
He turned to Minogue.
“Are you up on the tensions we are having here in Clare, Inspector? There are people now from fine families getting caught up in this nonsense.”
So Russell knew that he was related to Eoin, Minogue thought. He returned Russell’s look. The Superintendent continued with a poor pretence at being guileless.
“Now, I don’t know if it’s widely known in Dublin, but we might have a repeat of the Land War on our hands here. Whiteboys and Rapparees they’re not. These characters have machine guns, etcetera.”
“If he was so close to Bourke, why did he kill him?” Crossan demanded.
Russell jumped on the question.
“This Mr Spillner has a great command of English, am I right, Sean?”
Ahearne nodded.
“Very good indeed. Very precise account of everything, right down to the times. He was out to the house with us twice and we re-enacted the whole thing several times. It’s all consistent with what the PM shows.”
“‘Suggests,’ you mean,” said Crossan. “Why did he kill Bourke?”
“It was night,” said Ahearne. “He didn’t know Bourke from Adam. And he thought Bourke had a gun in his fist-”
“A gun?” Crossan echoed.
Ahearne shrugged. “We have an ashplant from beside the house. Spillner says he was certain that Bourke was pointing a rifle at him. So he let fly with the shotgun.”
“His defence is that he was in fear of his life?” Crossan spoke with a sharp tone of incredulity.
“It’s not for us to be deciding or guessing at what Spillner will or will not claim in his defence,” Russell retorted. “But I imagine that will be brought up at an inquest.”
“Inquest?” asked Crossan. “Don’t you mean trial?”
Russell’s expression didn’t change but he spoke more softly now.
“You hardly need me to explain the procedures to you, now, Mr Crossan. We give our reports to the authorities.”
Russell paused to let his listeners reflect on the way he said “authorities.”
“They’ll decide how to proceed on behalf of the State. We have plenty on our plates here in Clare, but we’ll proceed in good order.”
His eyes left Crossan and they settled again on Minogue. Russell’s expression had now changed but faintly. The edges of his mouth rose, in what ordinary citizens might believe was a smile.
“Remember me to Jimmy, won’t you, when you go back to Dublin.” The Superintendent rose from the table. “But tell him that Mayo should stick to the football. Leave the hurling to experts.”
Minogue was surprised to find Russell’s hand extended across the table. He shook hands with the Superintendent.
“Such as?” Minogue tried.
“Such as Waterford.”
Close, Minogue thought. He had guessed Russell’s accent as high-hat gloss on Kilkenny.
“Funny you’d pick them, now,” said Minogue. “My money’d be on Clare.”
“Safe home to ye, now,” said Russell, and turned on his heel.
Minogue looked back up the short avenue which led from Abbey Street into Ennis Garda Station. Solid, he thought, almost like a fortress. Gates and a house fit to stop any number of pike-bearing rebels when the gentry had built it as Abbeyfield House, two hundred and fifty years ago.
“Come on, will you,” barked Crossan. “Let’s not stand here gawking like wallflowers that were stood up on a date. I have work to do.”
“Well, the Mercedes is gone,” said Hoey.
“I’ll bet you Russell kept us there, lecturing, so as this cowboy German could get his bail fixed and have himself whisked away in that bloody Mercedes.”
A sudden gust blew grit down the street into Minogue’s face. He knew then what he would do. He followed Crossan.
“I’d like to go back in there and annoy that bollocks,” the lawyer said. “But where would that get us? A brick wall. Jesus!”
The swollen eyes widened even further, and Minogue took a step back. The sharp, cool air had greyed the barrister’s skin and watered his eyes. They reminded Minogue of some picture, one from his children’s storybooks.
“Not a damn word about charges, about whether he’s to stay in custody,” Crossan went on. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this Spillner fella is on his way to Shannon Airport this very minute.”
“Let’s go somewhere and sit down and drink a cup of coffee,” said Minogue. “Have a think and a chat. I have a phone call to make.”
Crossan blew out smoke and pointed conclusively at the curb.
A blue Ford Sierra with its antennae waving came down the avenue. Russell nodded to them from the passenger seat before the car picked up speed.
“Just happened to be there,” said Hoey.
Minogue drew his coat around him and looked up at the brown and grey clouds massed over the town. The River Fergus hissed over a weir, grey itself and flat, its banks lined with blackening leaves.
He studied the roof lines and the windows along Abbey Street.
“Time to stir the pot, I think,” he murmured. “Throw in another ingredient. I need a phone.”
Minogue sat next to Crossan and looked at the plate of sandwiches.
“Where’s Shea gone?”
“Off to get fags,” said Crossan. “Here, what happened to him anyway?”
“He’s recuperating from a recent accident.”
“Would he need to be irrigating his throat too with a few jars, maybe? I for one certainly feel the need this very minute.”
Minogue gave Crossan a lingering look to drive home the hint.
“No. The few jars are definitely not part of the cure,” Minogue said, and he bit into a sandwich.
“What’s this ‘ingredient’ you were talking about?”
“I phoned a man I wouldn’t ordinarily phone. You may know him. Shorty Hynes.”
“Not that bloody ghoul that writes for the Indo, is it? The murder-and-mayhem fella? Do you know him?”
The Inspector nodded. “I certainly do. He’s a royal pain in the arse. He’ll do nicely, I imagine.”
“Do what?”
“He’ll be phoning the Garda Commissioner about this fella Spillner. Why his bail might allow him to hightail it off to Germany courtesy of the German Embassy.”
“Oho,” Crossan snorted. “Good move there, Guard. The proverbial leak. I didn’t think you had it in you. You might as well fill in your request for asylum here in Clare after a stunt like that.”
“The public interest and the right to know, counsellor.”
Minogue took another bite and wondered how long it would take for Kilmartin to phone. Half an hour, he guessed. Hoey returned, tearing the cellophane from a packet of Majors.
“Let’s go over what we have, so far,” said Minogue. “See where the gaps might be.”
He rearranged the photocopies on the table and looked to Crossan.
“Will you start?”
“All right. We have the summary and copies of the book of evidence used to prosecute him.”
“Yep,” said Minogue. “All I found were copies of two Dublin newspapers’ coverage. Nothing new.”
“We all know that no appeal launched means no transcript?” Crossan asked.
Minogue nodded. “The full steno record is above in the strong-room in the Criminal Court in Green Street,” he said.
“Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here, but,” said Hoey, “why didn’t Bourke launch an appeal if the prosecution case was shaky? Didn’t his lawyer push him about an appeal, anyway?”
“Well, Jamesy recalled Tighe talking to him about it,” said Crossan. “And I talked to Tighe about it. According to him, Jamesy turned it down. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Bourke was a poet, you have to understand, and he had to have his way right to the end,’ says Tighe to me.”
“What does that mean, the poet thing?” asked Minogue.
“To pay the price maybe,” Crossan replied. “Give one’s life in lieu, that sort of grand gesture.”
“He wanted to be punished for killing his sweetheart, like?” Hoey asked.
The lawyer looked squarely at Hoey.
“A crooked kind of grandeur in this day and age, you’re thinking?”
Hoey’s mouth hung slightly open. A stream of smoke cascaded slowly over his lower lip as he squinted at the barrister. Crossan took a deep breath, blew it out slowly from puffed cheeks and sat back in his chair.
“Something broke inside Jamesy the first day of the trial, Tighe said. I believe that. It was like he gave up. And that attitude stayed with him for a long time, he told me.”
“Why’d he give up?” Minogue asked. “The second day, you said.”
“Okay. Tighe entered the not-guilty plea. The prosecution is going to use circumstantial evidence to put Jamesy there with the matches in his hand and corroboration as regards a motive. State gets up, Tighe told me, and presents witnesses: the Guard, Naughton. Tighe’s hands are tied in a sense because Jamesy had blacked out. But Tighe knows what he wants out of the not-guilty; the worst he can get, he figures, is manslaughter. Pucks of diminished responsibility and everything else. So far, so good. Jamesy was very straight with Tighe, said he couldn’t remember a damn thing, yes, he was really angry at Jane Clark, etcetera. So Tighe is sailing along nicely until the State gets witnesses talking about Jane Clark. The judge didn’t rule many of them out of order, Tighe remembers. He was new to the job and wasn’t as full of vinegar as maybe he should have been. To make a long story short, Jamesy Bourke erupts right there in the court.”
“He’s embarrassed at the information coming out?” Hoey asked.
“Oh, Christ, man, more than that-way more,” said Crossan. “‘Who was anyone here to judge her…bunch of hypocrites…always out to get him.’ The whole bit. Tighe tries to calm him down but makes a big mistake. He confides to Jamesy that it’s fine by him to have comment on Jane Clark’s character because that’ll help. Provocation, track record, bad influence, hashish-you can make that into anything, really. Jamesy sees red now. He was never the willing fool, he tells Tighe. Furthermore, he tells Tighe that he will-and Tighe remembers the exact words-knock his fucking block off if he has any part in sullying the name of Jane Clark.”
Crossan sat back and looked from Minogue to Hoey and back.
“So there he is in open court displaying the personality and behaviour a judge and jury scrutinise all the more keenly when there’s so much hanging on circumstantial evidence anyway,” said Minogue.
“The nail on the head,” said Crossan. “From then on, Jamesy gave up on it. So Tighe says.”
“So what did Tighe do?” Hoey asked.
“He did his best, I suppose, but maybe he lacked the experience. Maybe Jamesy threw him off track so much that… Well, maybe it’s in the full trial record that Tighe at least tried to hammer at the Guards or got some leverage out of the post-mortem report or something. Tighe actually ended up calling witnesses or cross-examining them as to Jane Clark’s mode of living up at the cottage.”
“A bit of character assassination in the service of diminishing his guilt,” said Minogue.
Crossan almost smiled.
“You kept your ears open in all those trials you’ve attended, I can tell,” he said. “God help you.”
“Yeah, well,” Hoey began, “how come it’s twelve years later and we’re talking about this?”
“Your man here”-Crossan nodded at Minogue-“asked me that the other day: ‘Why all these years later?’ Jamesy began to remember bits of things from that night. He thought it was the electroshock sessions he had after his breakdown that messed up his brain, his mind. Don’t forget, he was well and truly gargled the night of the fire. But he did say that he remembered Jane Clark hadn’t been drinking all that much that night. Nowhere near drunk enough to pass out.”
“How did he know that?” Hoey interrupted. “The way I heard it, he showed up at her place only to see she had the other fella there, Howard. Then they had a row and left. Bourke was away from the cottage two or three hours. Maybe she hit the bottle after he left.”
“She wasn’t drunk while he was there,” said Crossan.
“But she drank plenty,” said Minogue. “And had hash too.”
“Jamesy told me that he asked her for a joint but she told him it was all gone. And she liked to drink in the pubs, more than at home,” said Crossan.
“She could have been lying about the dope,” Hoey said.
“Whether or which,” Crossan continued, “I half expected this line from ye. I’m not complaining, now. Jamesy told me he remembered her saying she’d see them later on, after they made up.”
“That was in the thing he wrote too,” Minogue murmured. “But-I have to say this now-after all that time in jail, he’d have time to make up anything. Not even to speak of the mental trouble. He mightn’t even have known he was making it up.”
Crossan drew in his breath through his teeth.
“You may well be right,” he said, “but humour me a little, can’t you?”
“All right, so. I will,” said Minogue, “by changing the subject a little. I haven’t yet found any mention of smoke inhalation in the stuff I was able to collect so far. It’s almost always that finding which establishes clear cause of death in something like this.”
“Right,” said Crossan. His face had set into a grim smile. “And I haven’t been idle here at all. I’ve been trying to hunt down a copy of the autopsy performed on Jane. So far all I have is two telephone conversations with a clerk who looks after them. She got shy of me asking all those questions and as much as told me I’d have to put my request in writing-through Dublin, if you don’t mind, too. I’d sort of let the matter lie, but I think it’s time to hammer away at it again.”
Minogue stretched his fingers. Kilmartin should be exploding just about now, he reflected.
“In some respects Jamesy brought his own shovel to dig his grave,” Crossan said. He paused to swallow a portion of his sandwich and touched his lips as though to help the bolus descend past his protruding Adam’s apple.
“Here, you better take some of these before I have them all gone.”
Minogue took a half sandwich. Hoey slid down in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles.
“Back to this memory thing now,” Crossan resumed. “The nervous breakdown probably confused things even more. Jamesy admitted to me that his memory was tatty enough. He also told me that they-the psychiatric staff, he meant-had robbed him of his memory deliberately. With the convulsive therapy and the drugs, he meant.”
“Uh-oh, here we go now,” said Minogue. “Deliberately for what?”
“I had the selfsame reaction,” said Crossan. “Didn’t ask him. When I heard him talk that way, I thought it was all a lost cause. If he couldn’t recall details I could verify, then I was at bedrock.”
“Well, how is it he was able to recall anything at all?” Hoey asked.
“He maintained that things came back to him over the last few years.” said Crossan. “He’d had dreams.”
Hoey released a mouthful of smoke and watched it travel in a ball toward the ceiling. Minogue’s wandering eyes looked up from where they had been browsing, and he became aware of Crossan’s anger.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” said Crossan. “Jamesy Bourke is-was-a head-case. Obsessed, paranoid, delusional-the whole bit. He probably had psychotic episodes. I never said I believed his version of things. I told you”-Crossan pointed his finger at Minogue-“that in no way was I sure that a proper verdict had not been delivered. Am I clear on this?”
Hoey looked to Minogue and shrugged. A lounge-boy asked if they wanted more sandwiches. Minogue waved him away.
“Okay,” said Minogue. “Let me move on again: the odd accounting of time and who’s where the night of the fire. I expected to find a better mention in the book of evidence of the people involved. Of course, if I had the trial transcript proper, maybe I wouldn’t be thinking what I’m thinking. But usually the book of evidence has the stuff laid out a lot clearer. You know, a clear run of events, the time, the people. I lit on this probably because I’m oftentimes the one who gets called up by the State and I bring a judge or a jury through the places and the times and the people with the proper prods from counsel.”
Crossan was studying the smoke rising from the ashtray. He looked up and nodded once.
“So you saw that too. Look. Think back to that night again. Jamesy Bourke is on the piss in serious fashion and he bowls around to Jane Clark’s place. With amorous intent, you can imagine. It’s around the nine o’clock mark. A fine summer’s evening.”
Crossan began stripping the crust from another sandwich.
“In the door he goes, with a great welcome for himself, no doubt. Thereupon he discovers that Jane Clark is, shall we say, in congress with another suitor.”
“Dan Howard,” said Minogue.
“Yes, the very man. In flagrante.”
Minogue noted Crossan’s delicate mannerisms. The barrister dropped a long section of crust with a deliberate gesture the Inspector read as a sign of distaste.
“Words are exchanged, a row starts. They end up rowing out the back of the cottage. Jane Clark starts laughing at them. So far it’s a comedy. She locks the door, throws Dan Howard’s clothes out into the yard. Dan Howard collects a few pucks from Jamesy and they give one another the odd dig. Shouting at one another, that class of thing. No major damage being done so far, except to the male ego, maybe.”
Crossan paused to take an exploratory bite of his new sandwich.
“Jamesy has cooled down a little. Don’t underestimate Dan’s ability to talk his way out of trouble, now. Anyway. They both leave for the village with their heads hanging. Yes, they sloother into the village without damaging themselves.”
The barrister looked down his nose at the sandwich. Something in the sandwich took his attention and he peered in between the slices of bread.
“Jamesy is by times threatening to beat the shite out of Dan Howard and then by times cursing Jane Clark. In any event, by the time they walk into the village, they’re mighty thirsty. Howard has conceded that Jane Clark and himself had a bit of a thing going, ‘a fling’ as one might say, for several weeks prior. He tells Jamesy that she was, quote, ‘only a hoor,’ and that, between friends, they should give her the thumbs-down and not fall out over her. Dan Howard and Jamesy repair to the pub. Howard pours oil on the waters by plying Jamesy with drink. They’re there until closing time and beyond.”
“Where were they drinking?”
“Howard’s hotel, the Portaree Inn.”
“How did Howard get around? Didn’t he have a car?”
“He did, but not that night. It’s as well too, I suppose. He was full of drink most of the evening and more or less legless by the end of the night. It was Sheila Hanratty who tracked him down in the pub and put him in the door of his house.”
Something in the way Crossan spoke her name released an airy feeling in Minogue’s stomach. For an instant he imagined her in sunlight, the light showing up fair hairs on her forearms.
“Didn’t she get called to the stand?”
“Yes, she did. She was one of the witnesses brought up to testify to Jane Clark’s mode of living as regards drink and carry-on.”
“Who called her to the stand, anyhow?”
“Tighe, the lawyer. By this stage he had nothing going for him except to chop down Jamesy’s responsibility as best he can. Paint the victim in as bad a light as you can without having judge or counsel call you on it-and avoid offending the jury either-and that can influence the sentencing.”
“Was she his girlfriend then?”
“She wasn’t really doing a line with Howard. She hung around in her own mousy, demure way.”
“Mousy?” Minogue could not keep from saying.
“Oh, I grant you she’s no longer mousy,” said Crossan. “She had her designs on him. But, sure, so did half the county. Dan was a class of, what would I say in these enlightened times…”
“A ladies’ man?”
Crossan’s grin beamed suddenly and then relapsed into a rueful stare at the patterns in the carpet.
“More like a whoremaster.”
“That’s a term of some weight,” said Minogue. “Even for a lawyer to utter.”
“You don’t say, now.”
“You mean, I take it, that it was all right for Dan Howard to play the field but Jane Clark, she was supposed to go by different rules of conduct?”
“Right,” Crossan replied with a clear hint of derision. “You don’t need informing on the mores of Catholic Ireland, do you?”
“What did you think of Jane Clark yourself?” Minogue asked.
“Trouble,” Crossan answered without hesitation. “A lot of trouble. But she was a very exotic bloom in these parts. Like one of those plants up above on the Burren, something that’d have the botanists drooling over it: how the hell did it get here and how the hell can it grow in the middle of all this… Oh sure, tourists come and go, but for one to stay and try and make a home of it around here? She was very talented. But hearing about her and that girl Eilo McInerny coloured things a bit even for me. Not because of what they did but because I knew the girl was no match for Jane Clark.”
Crossan picked up another corner of sandwich but dropped it abruptly. He curled his lip. “Look, even if she seduced half the village, the parish priest and the schoolgirls even-”
“Did she?”
“Don’t be an iijit. Of course she didn’t. But the way the testimony was given and used, it sounded like she was the divil incarnate. What I was saying is that Jane Clark was not the galvanised bitch she is remembered as.”
Minogue withdrew into his own muddled thoughts. Crossan poured more coffee. Hoey scratched himself slowly and carefully under his arm. Crossan’s long bony forearms escaped his cuffs and his hands moved expertly around the cup to grasp the spoon.
“You can actually say ‘bisexual’ now without having to duck your head,” Minogue mused.
“You don’t say,” Crossan drawled. “This young one, Eilo McInerny- a waif in from Ballygobackwards-eventually said that she had been dragooned into the whole lesbian thing. Seduced.”
“You have this McInerny girl’s whereabouts, don’t you?”
“Just about. It took me time, I can tell you. She went to England right after the trial, but she finally came back. She’s working in a hotel below in Tralee. Another casualty we forgot about, I suppose. A lousy enough life she had, skivvying in the hotel and no prospects. I don’t doubt but that Dan Howard might have tried knocking on her door by times too. But Tighe got her up on the stand to help hammer home the witch bit. The devil-woman, the man-eater.”
Crossan broke off to drink some of his coffee.
“So Tighe did a good hatchet job on Jane Clark, I suppose,” Minogue prodded.
“So he thought until the sentencing: a life sentence for a charge of manslaughter. That was the shocker. Sweeney, the judge, had a rep, but even Tighe didn’t expect Sweeney to hit that hard. That’s what I still can’t get over, if you want to know.”
“What?”
“You’d think one person couldn’t have all that bad luck land on them. Or at least poor Jamesy didn’t deserve all that went on. Look. He finds out that the one he thinks is his girlfriend, his ticket out of being a lost soul out on a farm in the back end of the bloody Burren, she has other interests. Gets Tighe, brand new banister on the Legal Aid panel, to defend him. And then, even if he had King Solomon in his comer, he draws bloody Sweeney as the judge for the trial-a notorious one-man morality squad. Maybe it’s no wonder Jamesy went under, gave up on the system.”
Crossan’s eyes were bulging over the rim of his cup when he finished. He steadied it with the fingertips of his left hand and turned to watch as three tourists stepped into the foyer.
“I’m willing to start with this Eilo McInerny,” said Minogue. “In Tralee, you said. Have you spoken to her?”
“Matter of fact, I did,” said Crossan. “I phoned her a few months back, asked her would she be willing to talk it over, what she remembered of the night and so on.”
“How’d she react?”
“Told me I was wasting me time-her time too.”
Minogue looked over at Hoey to find him busy trying to scratch out a stain on the knee of his trousers with his thumbnail.
“Let me try with her now, then,” said Minogue to Crossan.
“When, like?”
Minogue glanced at Hoey again.
“Today. This afternoon. Whenever. Why not?”
“I’ll have to make sure she’s still there,” said Crossan. “And I’d have to tell her what we’re about. That ye’re Guards and so on. No shillyshallying here. Proper disclosure.”
Minogue shrugged his concession. A lanky youth with a crew cut sharp over a slack, pimply face appeared in the foyer. Minogue watched the youth seek him out, his eyes shifting from Crossan to Hoey to himself and then settling back on him.
“There’s a phone call beyond for a Mr Minogue, a Guard.”
Minogue thanked him and rose.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Crossan. “I’ll try to get in touch with the hotel in Tralee right now. Would you drive down there this afternoon?”
“Sure, I will,” said the Inspector. He poked Hoey in the shoulder.
“Do you want to talk to the Killer instead?”
Hoey feigned a grin but it was one of aversion. He reached reflexively for his cigarettes. Crossan went in search of a phone. Minogue sloped over to the desk and was directed to a stool by the wall. He sat down and leaned against the wall.
“Yes, Jimmy,” he said, and held the phone away from his ear.
“Close, but not close enough.”
Minogue elbowed away from the wall with the surprise.
“I wasn’t expecting-”
“You have such high regard for journalists like Hynes that you fired him right in my face?”
Minogue tried desperately to gauge the current mood of Garda Commissioner Tynan.
“Ah now, John. Shorty Hynes is like that. I merely passed on some facts to him. He’s not my puppet, now.”
“He’s an nasty little gawker. What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be off on your holidays.”
“Has Jim Kilmartin been in touch with you?”
“I was in touch with him,” said Tynan. “Ask me if it was before or after I received calls from Superintendent Tom Russell and Hynes.”
Jesus, I’m sunk, thought Minogue.
“You know Tom Russell, don’t you?” Tynan pressed on.
“Yes, I’ve met him briefly.”
“In the recent past?”
Minogue suspected that Tynan’s sarcasm was a teasing prelude to tearing his head off.
“Look, John-”
“Look, yourself. Tom Russell wants you out of his hair. I want Tom Russell out of my hair. He says you showed up at the Garda station in Ennis without an invite but with an IRA lawyer.”
“Wait a minute. Crossan’s not that, he’s just a damn good barrister who wins too many down here.”
“What are you doing prowling around there teamed up with this lawyer and another Guard on leave? One Seamus Hoey?”
“Give me five minutes-no, three minutes-to explain. Three minutes.”
“You had your five minutes and more in Bewleys restaurant the other day. I phoned Kilmartin and told him I’d be speaking with you over this, what can I call it, gatecrashing. He asked if you’d be kind enough to phone him after our conversation. I believe he has something to tell you.”
He’d not need to pick up a phone in Dublin for me to hear him, thought Minogue.
“Three minutes, John. Did Hynes give any details?”
“‘Details’? All Hynes and his ilk are likely to give me is a migraine.”
“But maybe he believes that the Garda Commissioner should know that a man accused of and freely confessing to the shooting death of another man, with the use of a firearm illegally imported into this country, is allowed back to Germany on his bail.”
“Is this a recording of a speech you’ve prepared? Does a journalist think this would be the first time that Justice has left Guards with their jaws hanging? This is news? If Hynes wants to make a thing of it, it’s in the Department of Justice and the Courts he should be kicking shins.”
“Didn’t he tell you anything about the man who was killed, though?” Minogue persisted.
“I didn’t give Hynes the chance. I gave him the number for an Assistant Secretary in Justice.”
“It’s the fella who was killed. That’s what has me here. Listen, about twelve years back…”
Minogue’s armpits were itching when he finished. Tynan had not tried to interrupt him. Minogue looked down to see that one of his feet was tapping away rapidly with a will of its own.
“You’re on holidays, right?” Tynan asked finally.
“Right.”
“You’re Sean Citizen in Ennis. You’re pursuing some research of your own. Right?”
“Right.”
“And there’s no call for you to be elbowing yourself in to investigate this shooting, pestering people to see autopsy reports or hang about the scene. Right?”
Minogue baulked.
“Do you hear me?” Tynan’s tone was mild enough for Minogue to recognise the impatience. “And Tom Russell and his well-trained Gardai can manage this shooting all the better now that he knows I’m aware of it here. Do you recognise that?”
“Yes,” said Minogue. “But-”
“Tom Russell will take care of it. Consider me briefed. As for the other stuff, your hobby there-”
“Look, John, the more I learn about it, the worse it looks. Bad process at the very least. If ever the Murder Squad should have been-”
“Wait, wait,” Tynan broke in. “Go ahead and find bad process then. You wouldn’t be the first to find it. But just for your own edification now, proceed with your research, but only if it has some basis in fact. I want to know in advance of anything important you expect to dig up. Phone Kilmartin too, by all means, and tell him you are to keep me posted. Point number two is this: I’m wondering if you might get vexed enough if things don’t go your way in Ennis to leak some more laments to the likes of Hynes. ‘Commissioner and Superintendent try to quash investigation into shooting.’ Call Hynes off, man. You went right over the wall with that, now. I don’t need to tell you. If you leak again, I’ll have you plugged. You made your point. If I see stuff like that in the papers, I’ll step out of Russell’s way.”
Minogue put on his protective coat of indignation.
“Come on now, John. I wouldn’t go over anyone’s head. Except maybe my own.”
“Come on, yourself. I’m saying, don’t do it. Last point. I know what your colleague, Seamus Hoey, did or tried to do. I’m saying nothing about it except this: Don’t be so sure that you know better than the caring professions.
“You may phone me if you find yourself being crucified, though,” Tynan added. “Crucified unjustly, I mean.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Cut that out, now. Don’t spend time trying to think of a way. Phone Kilmartin.”
Minogue walked slowly away from the phone. He was too bewildered to feel anything distinctly. One clear idea emerged from the fog. He would not phone Jim Kilmartin without having a lash of whiskey first. He waylaid a lounge-boy and had him bring a small Jamesons to the foyer. He thought of Kilmartin’s ugly mood awaiting ignition with a phone call. He tipped the returned lounge-boy, swallowed the whiskey in four gulps and headed back to the lounge. Hoey had slid far down in his chair in a defensive slouch, fortified as best he could against Crossan’s bulbous, straining eyes. Preoccupied, Minogue tripped over Hoey’s outstretched legs and staggered a few steps before regaining his balance.
“For the want of it,” said Crossan.
The Inspector’s befuddlement gave way suddenly to irritation. Thwarted, he thought, and he couldn’t even have a damn drink without having to hide it from Hoey.
“Friend or foe?” Crossan asked. “The phone call?”
“A bit early to tell,” Minogue grunted. “I have to make a call. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He returned to the foyer little mollified by the fact that neither Hoey nor Crossan had pressed him on whom he had been talking to. Had his expression told them all they needed to know? Kilmartin’s voice was full of the light inflections of whimsy, the sonorous and beguiling range of tones and emphases, of words lingered on, others dropped like petals on water, at once inviting and intimate, one minute wryly direct, dreamily inconclusive the next. Many still mistook such signs from James Kilmartin. Minogue guessed what could follow and it made him more nervous.
“Yes, yes,” Kilmartin went on in an eerily light-hearted tone. “I neglected to tell you, you might be interested. That clown in Drimnagh, Nolan. He got bail.”
“How? Why? When?”
“Ah, well now, you surely know that there’s been so much progress in law reform in the country now, Matt, what with us being real Europeans now and the whole place rotten with consultants and the helping professions and what-have-you. All the fine barristers and social scientists and psychologists we have choking the universities.”
“How?”
“Well, now. It appears that this fucking slug, Nolan, is a walking compendium of troubles. Wisha, the poor little scrap. They’re after discovering he has a learning disability so he’s a class of illiterate, and that, you know, builds up all kinds of trouble. Has a, ahem, a poor self-image. He doesn’t feel good about himself, I was told. Poor lad has an alcohol problem too.”
Minogue had had enough.
“All right, Jimmy, all right. I was-”
Kilmartin snapped back with the first show of anger.
“Shut up and listen. I want you to know what you’re missing. Poor lad has a gambling syndrome. Worst of all, God help him, he has food allergies-”
“Jimmy-”
“Yes indeed! A walking collection of troubles and tribulations. His food allergies that he didn’t know he had must have caused him to kick the other fella, you see. Now why didn’t I think of that? I heard of the case in the States where a fella got off because he was demented by a bar of chocolate, but we’re obviously way behind here in our grasp of this new psychology. Nolan’s a victim of society.”
The back of Minogue’s neck began to ache with tension.
“But as I was saying,” Kilmartin resumed in a singsong voice, “I think that I didn’t give this place in Greece a fair hearing when you were talking about it.”
“I was going to phone you anyway,” said Minogue.
“You were on your granny’s teeth. Like hell, pal. The more I think of it, Greece is the best place for you. Without a doubt. I hear that the police there need experienced men for mountain work, chasing the runaway goats and sheep. After your few days in Ennis, sure that’ll qualify you eminently for that class of demanding work. Gob, you could count the sheep for them too. Oh, and I hear tell there are good-looking sheep there, as well. Why don’t you toddle down to Shannon Airport, it’s right beside you there, and head for Greece. And take Hoey with you-”
“Leave Shea out of it, Jimmy.”
“And take that double-dehydrated, know-it-all, trouble-making bollocks Hynes with you. Where the hell did you get the idea of letting that bastard out of the bottle? That move was well below the water-line, man.”
Minogue did not think it wise to tell Kilmartin that he could muzzle Hynes for the moment because he intended to give Hynes exclusive if the Bourke thing came to anything. Then Kilmartin could afford to smile again at seeing Hynes all over the likes of Tom Russell and the Supers who wanted Kilmartin’s monkeys in their own zoos.
“I can phone the airport for ye, and lay on a plane,” Kilmartin was saying.
“Tynan told me to lay off the shooting death here, the one with the German tourist. That I’ll do.”
“Very big of you. Why didn’t you tell him to piss off? He’s only the Garda Commissioner.”
“But the rehash of the Bourke thing still stands. It stinks. I feel bad that I sort of fobbed off the thing when Crossan got to me, and now it’s too late. Maybe I can get something out of it-”
“For who? Isn’t the man dead now?”
“I plan to talk to the principals in the case, if I can find them.”
“Did I tell you that the hearing is gone bad on me?” Kilmartin asked remotely. “Maura says I should have me ears checked. I get a buzzing in me ears at certain times.”
“Look, Jimmy. I used Hynes because I had the local nabob, Tom Russell, slam a door in my face here. Hynes phoned Tynan about the German.”
The Chief Inspector’s voice turned gravelly.
“A word to the wise now, hair-oil: Tom Russell’s a hard man. Russell has his friends and Tynan knows that well. If you play trick-of-the-loop with Tom, he’ll nail you. And he’ll set the phone-lines to Tynan’s office burning.”
“He already has. He might do it again if he finds out I’m talking to the witnesses and so on.”
“Listen,” Kilmartin said with a softer urgency. “You started out this thing with some remarks that this lawman fella-what’s his name again?”
“Crossan. Alo Crossan.”
“…that Crossan made. If you really want to firm up, why not do the paperwork for an official reopening? I’ll phone Sheehan or someone in Justice, if you want. See what the score is. The appeal period is long gone but maybe we can work out a back door to getting the trial record typed up. Then you might see that you’re going nowhere.”
Minogue was taken aback by this sudden solicitude.
“Well,” he hesitated, while he tried to guess Kilmartin’s motive. “We don’t really have any new evidence to warrant a…”
The Inspector imagined Kilmartin’s smirk.
“Okay, look, Jimmy. My quandary is that I’ll have nothing until I talk to the people involved in the case. It’s tricky, I admit.”
“Tricky, you admit. Hhnn. And if you find the investigation produced the proper conviction?”
“I’ll walk away from it, with me head hanging. And I’ll buy you a hearing aid.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” said Kilmartin solemnly. “Very smucking fart, I’m sure. Keep your head, that’s what I say to all that. By the way, how’s the patient?”
“Progressing.”
“Unn-hhh. Florence Nightingale. Off the jar, I hope. That’ll be the cure, if you ask me.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can tell you’re not going to be talking your face off about that particular matter. I have something to tell you now and you’d better mark it well. Monsignor Tynan spared me five minutes of his precious time here on the phone. ‘Asked’ me to let you alone on this Bourke thing-”
“He did? Well, why didn’t you tell me that first?”
“Because I wanted to hear your bloody side. Do you take me for an iijit? Do you think I don’t know what Tynan’s up to here? Anyway, he phones me. As if he wanted you seconded, bejases. Gave him a soft ball, you know, ‘The Inspector is on his holidays,’ says I. ‘That’s the whole idea,’ he says back to me. Very shagging strange conversation. Tynan did not tell me that he’d be pleased as punch if you dug up any dirt in Tom Russell’s field. Do you know why he didn’t tell me that? It’s because I bloody well know that already!”
“I don’t think Tynan’s playing politics,” said Minogue.
“God, you’re the trusting little schoolboy, aren’t you?” Kilmartin scoffed with genial scorn. “Sure what do you know? You have your head in the clouds half the time. You don’t care who’s backstabbing who here. Tom Russell got passed over for Tynan several years ago. He can’t stand Tynan!”
“A question, James. Tell me something now, my memory is failing. Is Tom Russell also one of the Divisional Superintendents asking for the Squad to be dispersed?”
“Ha, ha,” said Kilmartin. “You finally woke up! You’re a quick learner. Figure it out for yourself, smart arse. Ha, ha, ha!”
There was bounce in Minogue’s step as he headed back to the dining-room. Hoey was alone at the table.
“What’s the word?” said Hoey.
Minogue sat down.
“Well, we still have jobs. Jimmy stepped aside for Tynan, but don’t expect an overdose of help and encouragement is about the size of it, I’m afraid.”
“Tynan? Where does he fit here?”
Minogue considered his reply.
“Remember the archaeologists going through the Viking rubbish pits down by the City Hall?”
Hoey frowned and began playing with coins in his pocket.
“You can tell a lot about what’s been kept by what’s been swept under the carpet.”
Crossan strode across the floor and flopped into his seat.
“I’m not guaranteeing Eilo McInerny will sing, now,” he said. “And she sounds cagey enough, but she’ll be in the hotel this afternoon.”
His eyes had returned to their full, startled appearance. He handed Minogue a piece of paper with the phone number and address of the hotel.
“I told her you were Guards, mind,” Crossan warned. “Everything above board. She wasn’t too keen, but I think I have her persuaded.”
“Did you tell her what happened to Bourke last night?”
“No. Let it be a trump when you deliver the news.”
Minogue nodded his appreciation slowly.
“We’ll be off this minute,” he said. “Before she or anyone else up in Dublin changes their minds.”
“What does that mean?” Crossan asked. “About Dublin?”
“It’s an inside joke.”
“Well. Go easy on her now,” said Crossan, and rolled his watch around his wristbone. “I told her that, for Guards, you were all right.”
“Don’t be worrying, counsellor,” said Minogue. “We’re housebroken.”
“I’m serious,” Crossan insisted. “It took a lot of persuading. Phone me. Will ye be back in Ennis tonight?”
Minogue doffed an imaginary hat.
“To be sure, your honour,” he said.