That was half eight, right?” Malone asked. Kenny nodded. Malone ran the tip of his biro along the lines in his notebook while he read. “ ‘I’ll phone Eddsy if you’re not back here with all the money at ten.’ ”
“Yes.”
Kenny had left his sleeves rolled up. He was rubbing his wrists. He tossed his hair back every now and then. The mannerism was driving Minogue to distraction.
“You knew all along you’d never come up with the rest of it, the rest of what she wanted.”
“The three thousand? Yes. I mean no. I knew I couldn’t.”
“You’re certain that you never actually told her that?”
“Right. I mean, what did she really think? She thought I had that kind of cash lying around the kitchen?”
Minogue shifted in his seat.
“You never told Mary anything which would lead her to believe that you actually wanted it, that you might be interested in selling the stuff-”
“Absolutely no way.”
“-or using the stuff.”
“Impossible. She was just coming the heavy, straight out. She’d tell the Egans if I didn’t cough up. I couldn’t believe it when she turned on me like that. Just unbelievable.”
Took the words out of my mouth, Minogue said within.
“She was really scared, you said. Scared she’d be found out?”
“Yes. Either the cash or the stuff had to be there. She said Bobby didn’t mind if she did a deal without advance warning. As long as the money was there right away. They’d been burned before, he’d told her. She said, anyway.”
“Look,” said Minogue. ”How would she form the opinion that you were in the market for this stuff? She told you she’d done something dangerous by taking the stuff from Bobby’s. Why’d she pin you for this deal?”
“Wait a minute here! You agreed earlier on that in no way was I dealing just because I took the package off her hands for a little while that night. No way! The worst thing I did, if I did anything wrong at all, was that I’d tried the stuff once or twice. Right? I mean, is that the crime of the century? You told me that wasn’t an issue here at all.”
“Stop, stop, stop, Mr. Kenny. What I’m trying to understand here is how you got yourself into this mess. You haven’t told us everything.”
“Ah, come on. You’re the cop! You know human nature, surely?”
Minogue eyed Malone.
“Everyone wants risk, don’t they? Oh, come on! Danger even. Mary was an attractive girl. She was ambitious. Anyone could see that. I grew up in a different way, a different world really, I suppose I’d have to say. I never really had to…you know?”
Minogue wondered how long she had been playing him. Was he hers or was she doing it for others? Mary Mullen had persuaded herself that this was her chance to cross into his world, the black furniture and the air-conditioning and the money that lived in the computers, real money that was clean and just as powerful as the worn and worried-over twenties she’d earned as a prostitute.
“It probably started and ended with me being stupid,” Kenny was saying. “Pretending I’d tried the stuff before. Or that friends of mine, people I know, had used-had said they’d used-stuff.”
“Stuff,” said Malone.
“All right. Drugs.”
“On one of those ‘one or two occasions,’ you used Ecstasy when you were with Mary. Am I right?”
“Yes. I admitted that. Right.”
“Did she?”
“No. She said she wanted to stay straight, that she liked it better that way.”
“She shoved this package into your lap when she got out of your car that evening,” said Minogue.
“Right. At first I hadn’t a clue, but then I squeezed it and I knew.”
“So you handed the package back to her.”
“Bloody right I did! Like a hot potato. But she threw it back in and walked off. More like ran off.”
“But not before she told you that you had to come up with the cash or else?”
“Or else Bobby’d know about it and there’d be big trouble.”
“Your reaction again?” said Malone.
“Well, like I said. I was, well, totally flabbergasted. I mean to say. It was so out of character for her. I really thought she was strung-out or something. Just nuts, she was. The look on her face, I mean.”
“So you didn’t put much store in her telling you that she was dead against drugs, that she never used?”
“Up to then I thought, well, she was admirable, I suppose. She hung around in that, em, subculture, like. I never saw her stoned. At least, if she was, I never knew. Never saw her overdoing the drink either. But at that moment, I knew I couldn’t reason with her. She was just nuts.”
“You decided to get a thousand quid together,” said Minogue.
“Not right then, no. I mean, I was late for the dinner with the client and everything.”
“When did you decide again?”
“All during that dinner, I was trying to decide what to do. I don’t think I tasted one dish that I ate. I knew it was time to get out of this, you know. I made up my mind that she could have the thousand quid. It’d be a way of saying goodbye, sort of. I had to ferret around a few bank machines, I tell you.”
“But you planned all along to go back to the canal at eight to meet her?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t keen to, I tell you.”
“So. Eight o’clock rolls around. You have a thousand quid and the package.”
“I gave her the envelope with the money. I tried to talk to her. She ripped open the envelope, saw what was in it and then she freaked again. I tried to tell her that we should, you know, give things a rest? That I didn’t like the direction we had been going in.”
“By this time, you’re steamed up, aren’t you?”
“Sure, I was annoyed-I mean it was pretty clear she’d set out to take me, right?”
Kenny held his hair back over his head with two hands. Minogue stared at the shine on his forehead. Kenny let go. His head drooped.
“I was working too hard,” he said. “Everything was too fast. I didn’t weigh things. I realized that it was time to-”
“Settle down?” asked Malone. Kenny looked up at him and frowned.
“Yes, settle down. But I resent the way you make it sound. I was ready for a serious long-term-”
“Relationship,” said Malone. Kenny gave him a hard look.
“Marriage, actually. You can understand that, can you?”
“Mary knew of this?”
“Not in so many words. But I think she knew something was up. Women’s intuition and everything, right?”
Minogue studied Kenny’s tentative smile.
“It might account for her rotten humour though, wouldn’t it?” Kenny added. “Timing, I mean, trying to get whatever she could before it was too late.”
“So. You tried to give her the package.”
“Right-as well as the money. The thousand quid. I told her that I guessed she was under some pressure and would this help her. Told her I just couldn’t get into this kind of thing. There was absolutely no way. Imagine, I said to her, me trying to get rid of this stuff to clients and friends and the like. I mean it would be funny if it weren’t so, well, tragic, I suppose. Accountants-the high life! Really? Christ, how naive. I really couldn’t figure out where she’d gotten the idea that the likes of me… Television, maybe? I don’t know.”
He glanced at Malone. The hostility lay like a shadow over his colleague still. For a moment he saw Mary Mullen and thousands like her, tens of thousands like her probably, standing at bus stops for late buses, full buses, to ferry them home to blighted suburbs. Mary had seen too many Alan Kennys cruising by in their Mercedes.
“Maybe I yapped too much,” said Kenny. “About deals, the film business.” He looked from Minogue to Malone and back. “Maybe it’s when you guys, you know, finally crack a case. Yes. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Crack a case,” said Minogue.
“When you’ve just pulled off a big deal, I mean. When you’ve gotten it on paper? The deal. You’ve just got to talk about it to someone.”
“You boasted to Mary Mullen about your deals.”
“What I meant was that Mary might have picked up a false picture of the work I do. She thought it was just a matter of picking up a phone, talking big talk and then you went home rich.”
“Oh,” said Malone. Kenny’s lips tightened.
“It might look like that to someone on the outside,” he said. “She used to pick up on strange phrases. ‘The inside track’ was one. She wanted to be in on deals, deals she’d never understand. ‘In the know’ was another one. I bought an apartment, right? I kept it, I rode the trend and got out with a tidy sum. Okay? Is that so awful?”
Minogue looked at the wall above Kenny’s head.
“But Mary-people like Mary, anyway-they think it’s easy. They think it’s magic! They can’t see how it’s done. Don’t you get it? She said, ‘But you don’t use the apartment, you don’t even live in it.’ You see what I’m trying to get at?”
“Maybe, Mr. Kenny. Maybe.”
“So I tried to explain to her that money was made in buying and selling merchandise and services. Products. An expert’s time and training. Property. Information. Investments. Her eyes would glaze over. So when she shoved those pills at me and I told her I could never use them, she tells me, ‘Well, you told me it was all about buying and selling stuff you didn’t need.’ Why couldn’t drugs be just another commodity there, you know?”
“They already are,” said Minogue.
“Yes, but not legitimate business, not in the sense of…”
He let the words trail off. His eyes still blazed as they bored into the Inspector’s.
“Okay,” said Minogue. “There you were. You gave her the money, you gave her the package. It’s eight o’clock.”
“I gave her the money, yes. I tried to give her the package.”
“That was when things turned, let me see…” He looked down at his notes. “ ‘Really nasty’?” Kenny nodded.
“I told her I just couldn’t do it. She could keep the money. I told her, tried to tell her, that it was time to, you know…”
“Go our separate ways,” said Malone. Minogue glanced at him. The detective’s face was blank.
“That’s right,” snapped Kenny. “And, by the way, I’ve heard your accent there.”
“And?” said Minogue. Kenny kept his eyes on Malone.
“Haven’t you heard of inverted snobbery?”
Malone shook his head.
“Well, maybe you can’t credit anyone who happens not to have been born on the Northside of Dublin with any feelings, any positive feelings, I mean. Is it my fault I grew up in Foxrock or something? Is it my fault I have a good job? Christ, man, you don’t know the hours I put in! But hey-I’m not complaining!”
Malone’s expression didn’t change.
“A thousand quid,” he said.
“Yes! A thousand quid. That’s a lot of money for me. A lot.”
“You tried to buy your way out,” said Malone.
“Buy my way out? That’s a damn lie! I reckoned on it being enough to get her out of whatever scrape she was in. Enough for her to forget that stupid stunt she was trying to get me into.”
Scrape, thought Minogue. What was the going rate for an abortion in London anyway?
“ ‘Scrape.’ ”
“Whatever she wanted to use the money for, I don’t know. Maybe she had debts?”
“You keep on saying, or suggesting, that Mary was under pressure. How so?”
“I don’t know. I don’t.”
“What did you suspect?”
“I really don’t know. Maybe they told her to hurry up. The Egans, I mean.”
“Um. It was at that time that she became, shall I say, explicit about threats?”
“Yes.”
“Go through it again.”
“Do I really have to? We’ve been talking… Oh, I get it. You want to find inconsistencies and then jump on me, is it?”
“Maybe,” said Minogue. “Do we, Tommy?”
“Don’t know about you. I wouldn’t say no to a bit of that. Yeah.”
“So, Mr. Kenny?”
“Number one: She’d tell the Egans that I had stolen the drugs-the package. They’d believe her, she said. Her word counted for a lot more than mine there. ‘When it really counted,’ she said. Maybe mine might count with the Guards, I remember her saying, but where it really mattered, hers would. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
“Deeply,” said Minogue. “Go on.”
“This Eddsy Egan would do a number on me, personally. He was a sadist, she said. He’d, well, he’d…”
“‘Chop your fucking nuts off,’ ” Malone murmured. Kenny frowned at him.
“Yes. So I began to get more annoyed. I mean, who was she to threaten me like this? I mean, what had I done to her that I deserved that kind of thing?”
Done to her, Minogue reflected. Given her hope, maybe.
“I mean, all she has to do is bring the damn stuff back,” said Kenny. “Then she can keep the money, right? Go her own way. I mean to say, Mary knew how to take care of herself, didn’t she? But no. She goes into a tirade about us, how I was the scum of the earth.”
Malone began to recite, his finger following the scribble across his pages.
“‘Southside fucking bastard…’ ”
“Yes, yes-whatever. That’s when she comes up with the photo bit. She tells me she has photos of a night in the Breffni hotel. I don’t care, I tell her. Well, Eddsy Egan does, she screams back.”
Kenny broke off to rub his hands alternately through his hair.
“You knew before then that she did photo sessions for the Egans?”
“No. She told me that Eddsy, the crippled-looking one, was the one who started her on them. Apparently he can’t, well, you know what I’m getting at. All he can do is look on, I hear. He likes to know the girls he’s looking at. The crazy one, Bobby, is into it as well. He gets prospects for the brother. Bobby’ll go, how can I put it, all the way. His harem. Him and Mary. As well as others, of course.”
“Back to the threats. The break-every-bone-in-your-body bit.”
“You make it sound trivial. Like it’s funny or something.”
Minogue and Malone stared at him.
“She said, ‘I know a guy who can break every bone in your body.’ ”
“ ‘Every bone in your fucking body,’ ” said Malone. He wasn’t looking at his notebook now.
“This is separate from the threat about Eddsy Egan?” asked Minogue.
“Well, I didn’t know, did I? At that stage I was thinking that she was so shrill about the Egans that there was something strange going on. More than just her anger and everything. She was losing it. Panicking. I got the idea then that she wouldn’t dare tell the Egans. That she’d get into trouble with them if they found out what she’d done, what she’d tried to do. That she was bluffing.”
“So the other threat was her own, sort of?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“You used the term ‘double-cross’ earlier on. You said you believed that Mary had been caught in a double-cross.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And that you were annoyed enough-the money, the threats-that you decided to just drive off.”
“That’s right.”
“With the drugs in the car.”
“With the package in the car, yes.”
“You wanted to teach her a lesson.”
“I never said that. I planned to come back later and try again. See if she had cooled down. See if I could talk some sense into her.”
“You made no attempt to find more money.”
“Absolutely not. No way! Look. You know I’m telling you the truth. I’m not going to grovel. Just look at the proof I’ve given you!”
“Proof? Sorry. Proof of what, now?”
“Proof that I’m telling you the truth! Proof I had nothing to do with what happened to Mary.”
Minogue looked down at the table-top, at the random marks of a biro from some other interview. Couldn’t the cleaners get them off or what? He rubbed at them with the heel of his hand.
“Mr. Kenny,” he said, and rubbed harder on the marks. “I have to tell you that I’m puzzled.”
“Puzzled? Okay. I mean, why? I don’t get it.”
“Puzzled. You are not obviously a stupid man. You have waived, or at least not exercised, the right to be represented by counsel. You have tendered information to us here, all building up to a substantial and useful statement, a statement I’m assuming you’ll sign your name to this evening.”
“I stand over everything I said here, that’s right.”
“Good, Mr. Kenny. Very good. Listen, now. You are right to be afraid of the Egans. It is a sensible and natural reaction. It’s an adaptive behaviour which has brought us out of the mud and the jungle to a fine city like ours here. With all its faults, of course. Many people are afraid of the Egans. That is business for the Egans. They make money out of fear. Now you seem to recognize that your rashness had led you to a pretty pass here. It’s after bringing you over the line where the law is concerned.”
“Technically, maybe,” said Kenny. “But you’ll see the package with your own eyes. It hasn’t been touched by me. Where is that Guard anyway, the one who I gave-you gave-my house-key to? He should be back by now, shouldn’t he? I never gave you or any Guard permission to search the flat for anything more than that, to retrieve that package, I mean.”
“Traffic,” said Minogue. “You know how it is. Dublin wasn’t designed for traffic.”
Kenny tapped his fingers flat on the palm of his other hand.
“Look. I swear it was never opened. Don’t you understand? It was Mary who made the arrangement, the time. If she had been there, I would have given it back to her. I would have dumped it on the path at the very least if she was still nuts. If she had just been there! You see? She should have been there when she said. I keep thinking that. She should have been there.”
Wrong, thought Minogue. Mary Mullen didn’t belong there. She had worked her way out of that place. She had been determined never to go back.
“You were late, Kenny,” he murmured. ”That’s what did it.”
Kenny’s stare slid to the table-top. His hands began to work through his hair again.
“You wanted to teach her a lesson,” Minogue went on. “Didn’t you?”
“I never thought…”
“You wanted to show her that you weren’t going to be pushed around by a-well, Mr. Kenny, perhaps you have the word for her? No? ‘Who does she think she is,’ right?”
“You’ve got it wrong. The most of it anyway.”
“Okay, Mr. Kenny. This is why I said I am puzzled. You have told us things that could incriminate you further. And still you haven’t gone baying for a solicitor.”
“I’ve nothing to hide.”
“I’ve worked on the Squad a while, Mr. Kenny. I have this picture of you in my mind’s eye, driving over to the canal. On time. Ahead of time, even. I see you annoyed at her. Ready to lose your temper. You look after yourself, Mr. Kenny. In the physical line, I mean. Bet you have a substantial arm from that squash, don’t you?”
“Squash? What does that have to do with anything?”
“You have means, Mr. Kenny. You have motive. Client or no client, dinner or no dinner, you cannot yet account for all of your movements that evening. So now I see that you have opportunity.”
He stopped and looked at Kenny’s head going from side to side. Were the roots a different colour?
“All right. Let’s go at it again. The first time, she dropped the bag onto your lap…”
“Are you sure?” asked Kilmartin. Minogue’s mug slipped and hit the desk-top with a bang.
“Not once,” he repeated.
“Ah, go on with you. I bet he knew, the bugger. Accountants aren’t stupid, you know. He’d have guessed you’d be looking for the giveaway. ‘Expecting’? ‘Pregnant’?”
Minogue said nothing. He looked over at Malone. The detective was still talking quietly into the phone. Leaning in over the desk-top, Malone seemed to be trying to smooth the deep lines in his forehead.
“Not even ‘in trouble’?” said Kilmartin. “That’s a good old reliable, isn’t it?”
“No. He thinks he had been set up from the beginning. He puts it down to pressure on her from the Egans to rope him in good and proper.”
“Huh. Maybe he thinks he has us codded. Kenny. Any percentage in us picking him up again and working on him tonight?”
Minogue looked down into his own mug. Paris: capitale du monde. Kathleen had bought it for him four years ago. He had mended the same break in the handle twice now.
“No, Jim. Let him sit in it. A sleepless night will do him good.”
“Joseph Byrne,” said Kilmartin. “The oul lad with the dog and the honest wife. He hears the row at ten o’clock. Kenny gets there late for the showdown, the final payment. It could fit.”
Kilmartin pushed a folder in toward the centre of the desk-top and folded his arms. He stared at Minogue’s mug from Paris for several moments. Then his face wrinkled up and he twitched.
“Ah, Christ,” he hissed. “What am I thinking? Sure Byrne is half blind! I saw a copy of his prescription that you got. Jesus, he couldn’t see the Holy Ghost if He appeared to him at the end of the bloody bed. Couldn’t put Byrne in a witness box, man. It’d be a circus.”
Minogue took another mouthful of coffee. He held it at the back of his mouth before he let it drop down his throat. Malone was nodding slowly now. He could see the mark of the ear-piece on Malone’s ear as he shifted it. He looked at the clock. Phone Iseult’s again. Kilmartin rubbed his eyes.
“Kenny didn’t think she was bluffing about getting a heavy to work him over,” said Minogue.
“I’ll buy that all right. He believed her enough to rake up a good lump of money.”
“So did she, could she, would she?”
Kilmartin looked across at Malone. Still yakking away. Looked worn-out.
“If it was a planned job from the start, in with the Egans, I mean, she would have called in the likes of Lenehan… Ahhh. A load of crap!”
“What is?”
“Almighty God!” Kilmartin cried out. “Maybe he didn’t clock her, but by God, he knows more than he’s told you! This Kenny creature… He’s lying, lying, lying. Frigging lying! Come on, man. Hold him over. Let him get as scared of us as he is of the bloody Egans!”
Minogue shrugged off Kilmartin’s pique.
“I still say leave him out there. Let him sweat.”
“If she’s freelance trying to put a con on Kenny, would she bluff about calling in a heavy? I don’t know… Hhhnnnkkk. God, the wind.”
A whiff of Kilmartin’s burp came to Minogue. Bluff, he wondered; would she have given Kenny another chance to come up with the money? Or had she run out of time?
“Never screeched for the solicitor in the end.”
Kilmartin wheezed and coughed and belched again.
“Huh. You’d expect the likes of him to be all over the shop, calling in the UN. Stampedes of barristers running down the halls.”
“Point in his favour, I had to conclude, James.”
“Really, Captain? So’s the fact he puked all over the jakes, you’ll be telling me next.”
“So’s the fact he pu-”
“All right, all right! Very smart.”
“Tell me something now before I go, Jim. Do you remember Maura being pregnant?”
“Maura? My Maura? My current wife?”
“Yes. That Maura.”
Kilmartin gave his colleague a flinty glare.
“There are some things I don’t mind forgetting. What about Kathleen? Shouldn’t your memory be twice as good as mine? Sorry. Three times, I meant to say.”
“I remember Kathleen being sick with Iseult.”
“Long before she got to be a teenager?”
“I’ll tell her that one, James. She’ll love that one. Your timing couldn’t be worse.”
“What is this anyway? Are you after joining up some group to get in touch with your feelings or something? Who was it put out the idea that life is a shagging holiday anyway?”
Kilmartin paused to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. “’Cause if you’re into that stuff, you better keep way to hell away from me. I can’t abide that shite.”
“You do remember then.”
“Damn right I do.”
He leaned toward Minogue to whisper.
“Why do you think we have only the one?” He sat back again and examined his nails.
“World War III around the house, as I recall. Jases, we could have had the Russians bet into the ground with a platoon of expectant mothers. Honour of God, man! And the humours! Floods of tears and then the next thing she’d look like a holy picture or something. All cuddly and what have you, full of plans, talking all night long. Oh, well I remember that bit. Too well! ‘The nesting instinct.’ New curtains, crockery, furniture, paint the house-God in heaven, man, sure I was years paying it off! Running around like a red-shank I was. She was ordered off the feet in the finish-up. Swelling in the legs.”
Kilmartin swilled the remains of his tea in the mug.
“Hormones, man. Sure you know yourself. Giddy: pure giddy. Wild out by times.”
“Did she ever offer-threaten, I mean-to maim you? In a red-hot row, like.”
“Mind your own business. That’s personal.”
“Did she, Jim?”
Kilmartin gave him a limpid stare for several seconds.
“What kind of a question is that? Of course she did. Is there a married man above ground that hasn’t had that? Wake up there. It’s par for the course, that stuff.”
“Out of character for Maura, of course.”
“To be sure it was. Oh, now I get it! You’re playing doctor! This diagnosis of Mary Mullen flying off the handle due to having a bun in the oven?”
“Pressure, Jim. She was desperate.”
“Christ, she’s not the only one. You’re telling me that she lost the head? It’s not the same these days, you know. ‘In trouble’: I’ll tell you who’s in trouble-it’s the likes of you and me what’s having to pay Social Welfare for these single mothers sitting around the house on their fannies.”
Kilmartin’s epiglottis issued a wet flap as he downed the last of his tea. It was followed by another gassy belch between his teeth.
“Plenty of work to be done,” he growled. “I don’t care what they say in the lab. They’re going to go over the videos again, bejases. And all this talk about computer enhancements! Sure, the frigging machine does everything. What are they complaining about?”
It took several moments for Minogue to realize what his colleague was talking about. The video footage of the site, the gawkers that night, the parked cars.
“What about the Big Bust, James.”
“What are you on about now? Elizabeth Taylor, is it?”
“Keane. The police officers here and in our brethren European countries who are waiting for D-Day on the Egans.”
“Oh, very clever. Ask me something else.”
“Plate-Glass Sheehy’s brigade. Have they new stuff?”
“Nothing since this Kenny lead.”
“No bag?”
“No bag.”
“Jack Mullen?”
“Much as it pains me to tell you, pal, Holy Jack Mullen is almost in the clear. John Murtagh traced a fare last night, a drive-off what never showed on the meter.”
“No Hickey?” Kilmartin cleared his throat.
“No Hickey. But maybe these Egans’ll get him first.”
Minogue picked up his mug and stood. Malone was walking in arcs the length of the phone wire now, nodding and listening. Minogue eyed Kilmartin.
“Listen, you big Mayo bullock. I’m taking time to rake over all the statements again. We’ve missed someone or something. I’ll even pick up Patricia Fahy again. Kenny. Anyone. Who could Mary have called in, if she wasn’t bluffing-that’s what we have to know.”
Kilmartin began pushing his mug around the desk-top.
“Listen to you,” he muttered. “You Clare gamog. Tough guy, are you? Maybe the answer is right under our noses but we’re too busy gawking all over with binoculars. Think Hickey, man. What have you got stuck in your brain there with him, anyhow? Is it just because he does a bit of the art stuff that you think he could never commit a murder? Sure man dear, the wind is whistling through his alibi.”
Minogue decamped to his own desk. Malone was still on the other phone. By the look on his face, Minogue judged that he was trying to explain something that he knew his listener couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.