Minogue rubbed at his eyes again. They were burning. It was just gone nine o’clock. He’d slept four hours last night. He’d be destroyed by the middle of the day. Kathleen was still rummaging in her handbag. He looked down along by Stephen’s Green at the bank of clouds. No mirage. Did they seem so white just because they were high?
“Yes, I have it,” said Kathleen. She brandished the money-purse. “I thought for a minute I’d left it at home. The head is gone on me.”
She turned down the rear-view mirror and examined her eyes. She pouted then and turned her head to one side. He yawned.
“You look smashing.”
“Not overdressed now?”
“No. Just right.”
“About half-ten then? Will that be time enough?”
“If I can find her by then, I’ll bring her.”
She opened the door.
“I’d go around to her place myself, you know, only she might eat the head off me.”
He nodded and yawned again. She peered at him.
“Did you get any sleep at all?”
“A bit. Enough. Don’t buy any of that stuff, do you hear me?”
“I’m just looking. It’d be good to have an idea of expense, wouldn’t it?”
He edged back into the traffic and waved as he passed her. Home from the hospital just after one, couldn’t sleep. Malone hadn’t phoned. To hell with the time, he had decided-he needed to know what was going on. Malone had been out late, trying to find the brother. His mind was made up, he had told Minogue. Terry would be better off inside than on the street. He’d gone to bed wide awake at two o’clock, had read for a while but still couldn’t sleep. The odd thing was that he’d hardly thought about Iseult at all. It was some vague, airy feeling in his chest that had kept him awake. He still had a confused memory of sitting on the edge of the bed, looking out through the trees at the dawn.
Several times as he traversed the Coombe, he found himself still searching for Liam Hickey’s face on men he saw. He was last in for the briefing. He sat next to Kilmartin. Murtagh began detailing the timetables for Jack Mullen.
“Voh’ Lay-bah’s left us in the lurch again,” Kilmartin whispered. “You and me are going to sit down and have a chat about this. Before this day is out too, pal.”
“Later, James.”
“Said he mightn’t be able to make it in until Monday, if you please.”
Minogue’s turn came next. He found himself answering a query about Alan Kenny with the reply that he had not ruled out arresting Kenny on drug-trafficking charges. Kilmartin pressed him hard on Kenny’s alibis. Minogue didn’t argue: yes, he agreed with Murtagh, Kenny stunk. No, it wasn’t too much of a risk to leave Kenny stew in the open. The surveillance on Kenny since his interview had shown nothing odd yet.
Presenting the business of Hickey knowing which tape had been stolen hadn’t won Kilmartin over. It wasn’t bulletproof, was it, was his attitude yet.
“Well, why the hell does this scut Hickey need all day to rest? Says who?”
“Says the doctor who examined him. A Doctor Monaghan.”
“How bad of a hiding did he get?”
“He was up in a heap. Banged around the head, bruising all over. He was kicked unconscious.”
“Huh. The poor little shite. I don’t think. You don’t think he was faking it?”
“Not that I could see.”
Sheehy started into his lists next. In the laconic delivery, Minogue detected a weariness which told him that all the door-to-door officers were just about fed up. Kilmartin told him to get a second interview out of the barman who had put them on to Kenny. Sheehy nodded. Minogue waited until Murtagh began detailing from the photocopies of the final pathology report before nudging Kilmartin.
“Jim, I need to get away for a couple of hours. Personal.”
Kilmartin kept reading.
“Back by dinner-time,” Minogue added.
“First we have Molly falling by the wayside,” Kilmartin declared. “Is this contagious or something? Or just because it’s Saturday?”
For a reason that Minogue couldn’t figure out even later as he sped down the quays, shaking his head with anger and embarrassment, he had told Kilmartin about Iseult. He turned onto Capel Street bridge, still squirming at the recollection of Kilmartin’s wink. And Eilis giving him that look as he hurried out red-faced! Essex Street was chock-a-block. Reluctantly he paid a tenner deposit to the attendant at a new car-park on the site of a recently demolished building.
Iseult needed ten minutes to finish planing a piece of wood for the installation. Minogue studied it and asked no questions. The horns were generic, he decided. He recognized a hoof further back.
“So you and Ma were just meeting for a cup of coffee anyway,” said Iseult. Minogue yawned.
“That’s it. So you’ll join us, will you?”
“And Ma didn’t throw a fit?”
“Calm, cool and collected. But she’s hurt that you didn’t tell her first, I think.”
Iseult stopped planing and glanced over. Minogue looked back. She resumed planing.
“So will you?” he asked again.
“No lectures, no guilt trips?”
“I think your mother would like to hug you and hold you, Iseult.”
She put down the plane and glared at him. He looked at his watch.
They turned onto Fleet Street. Bewleys was around the corner. He could smell the roasting beans over the diesel smoke, from the buses.
“I make the decisions,” she said over the noise of the traffic. She kept rubbing her hands with a rag she had brought from the studio. “No preaching, right?”
“Honour of God, Iseult, it sounds like the United Nations here or something. It’s your mother and father you’re meeting for a cup of coffee.”
“Well, cranky, isn’t it with you this morning, is it now!”
He debated telling her that this cup of coffee could cost him upwards of five quid.
“I didn’t sleep a whole lot last night.”
“That’s too bad. I had a great sleep. I think the morning thing might be over. Maybe now that everything’s out in the open… Maybe it was just nerves.”
“Well, you were never short of them.”
“What?”
“You always had a nerve.”
She flicked the rag at him before stuffing it into the back pocket of her jeans. Her pace slowed just after they turned onto Westmoreland Street. Minogue looked over at Iseult and then followed her gaze down through the crowd of pedestrians. Kathleen had been waiting outside the restaurant. She had spotted them. There was something about her broad smile and vigorous wave which made Minogue hesitate. At least she didn’t have shopping bags under her arm, he thought, shopping bags full of baby clothes.
“What the hell kind of a caper is this?” Kilmartin asked. “Still celebrating, are we? Ah no, man. Have to get back. Come on now.”
The Chief Inspector belched.
“I mean, as if things weren’t bad enough now with this…”
Minogue looked over at him.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong! I didn’t mean the good news, oh, no! Grandfather… Ha ha ha! Oops.”
Minogue eyed his colleague. Kilmartin patted his stomach in an effort to tease out another belch.
“We have to move with the times now, Matt. If you’re happy, I’m happy. And Kathleen is reconciled, isn’t she? Sure, that’s great! Great entirely, man, great!”
Reconciled, thought Minogue. He recalled Iseult and Kathleen embracing, crying both, and Bewleys’ clientele looking shyly on.
“What I actually meant,” said Kilmartin in a voice laden with sarcasm, “was that bastard above in the hospital, Hickey, doing a bunk on us. Looks bad for us, very bad.”
Minogue shrugged.
“My God, man, you don’t sound too worried about this!” said Kilmartin.
“Ah, he’ll turn up. He’s off the list in my book, Jim. The tape thing was pretty solid.”
“To hell with that! What did he run for, then? I’m going to tear the head off that bloody Guard-”
“Jim. I’d rather you let me do that. Really. It’s my own fault, a bit of it.”
“You don’t know how to give people a proper bollocking! You told me he was in dog-rough shape there last night.”
“He was, Jim-”
“Well, by Jesus, he was well able to leg it out of the bloody place at eleven o’clock this morning, wasn’t he? There are no less than five cars looking for him. The bastard! And us like iijits, waiting for the go-ahead from a doctor checking on him every half-hour. ‘Sleeping,’ my arse!”
Minogue waited for Kilmartin to subside.
“You asked me why he ran. He was scared we’d do him for robbing the stuff out of the car and the Egans would reach him in jail.”
“Huh. Why don’t you just phone them and tell them that you consider his alibi just grand, thank you very much. They’d appreciate that, I bet.”
“Maybe the two pints wasn’t enough to soften you up.”
“Ho ho, cowboy! You won’t get in my way when I have to tear strips off Malone. By Jesus! In our hour of need and all that. We all have to leave our personal lives at home now-well, I mean if it’s bad news now, of course. Not your happy event.”
Kilmartin suddenly sat forward.
“Here, turn around, will you! This is Dolphins Barn! Injun country, man! Turn around to hell out of this.”
“We were in the vicinity, Jim. Why not tour around a bit now that we’re here?”
“The vicinity? You’re in the vicinity of getting us into a heap of trouble.”
“When we were small,” Minogue began. He was interrupted by another belch from Kilmartin. He held his breath for several seconds until he was sure the smell had wafted by him. He steered the Citroen by rows of flats, shops shuttered save for their doorways, walls alive with graffiti.
“You were never small,” said Kilmartin. He turned and looked out the back window.
“My God, man. Did you see what road this is?”
“Tell me.”
“The bloody Egans’ place is down the way here, you gom!”
“Listen. I was saying. When we were small, we’d go into town. Ennistymon, say-”
“Where the hell is that? Look: turn this bloody car around.”
“All right. Ennis-”
“Never heard of it. Let’s get out of here. I know you’re as frustrated with this hands-off thing on the Egans-”
“Galway city then, to get a suit of clothes-”
“Did they wear clothes back then? I thought ye’d be too busy fighting off the shagging dinosaurs to be looking in shop windows. Turn this car around, for the love of Jases!”
Minogue still felt dopey from the two lunch-time pints.
“If you don’t turn the car around, I will!”
“We’d look in the shop windows,” Minogue went on. “My mother’d say, ‘Well, why not look. It doesn’t cost to have a look, does it?’ ”
“It might cost you a puck in the snot, pal. Come on, let’s get out of here!”
Minogue braked by the remains of a bus-shelter.
“Look at the place,” Kilmartin grumbled. “Beirut or something- look, there’s the car. The blue Corolla. Look at them. Oh, Christ, they’ve spotted us.”
“They’ll log us in anyway, James. Let’s mosey on over.”
Minogue parked behind the detectives’ car. Kilmartin stepped warily out onto the path after him.
“That’s right,” said Minogue. “First cousin on my mother’s side.”
Heffernan laughed. Macken, the other detective, smiled but did not take his gaze from the street. Heffernan drew on his cigarette again.
“That’s the one, all right,” he said. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“Buried in Corofin,” said Minogue. “I suppose we’re third cousins then. Or is it second cousins once removed?”
“Thought you had to be dead for that,” said Kilmartin.
“Hah,” said Heffernan. “So you have a murder then. The Mullen girl?”
“And we have to be polite and take our turn with all of ye,” said Minogue. Heffernan turned his head and winked at him.
“Being as we’re cousins and all. Here, if you think you’re put-upon here, wait ’til I tell you the kind of thing we have to swallow by the day here. Ever think you’d see the day when Special Branch officers-”
“Hardworking, conscientious Special Branch officers like the ones you are unofficially sitting with this very minute,” added Macken.
“-would be ordered to line up behind civil servants from the Revenue Commissioners and Customs?”
“Never thought I’d see the day,” said Minogue.
“It’s an affront,” said Heffernan.
“An affront,” said Minogue. “Without a doubt.”
Minogue took Kilmartin’s silence to mean that the Chief Inspector was all too aware that these two Special Branch detectives had the disquieting freedom to say anything they wanted to them. They recognized that neither member of the Murder Squad wished to be officially present in their surveillance car.
“They’ll fall between the cracks due some technicality,” said Heffernan. “It’s too complex to go right. That’s what I think.”
“Far too complex,” said Minogue. “Won’t go right.”
Heffernan shifted in his seat, groaned and looked down the street again. Rubble from a demolished building next to the Egans’ shop had been there long enough to be almost completely taken over by huge-leafed weeds, cans and plastic supermarket bags swollen with household rubbish. Why did the Egans keep a shop here, why did they not seem to care about the decay and squalor? Back up the street were buildings with blocked-in windows and doors. A pub, the Good Times. The Good Times? A bookies across the street was the only functioning building in a short block which seemed similarly slated for demolition. A gas company van was parked across the street behind a two-door Lancia which Heffernan told them belonged to Bobby Egan. The blocks of flats which had gained the area its notoriety were out of sight behind the street.
Traffic came in gluts released by a traffic light two blocks back toward the city centre. Little stopped or even slowed here on the street. Two young mothers wheeled their prams by, leaving their loud speech hanging in the air for Minogue to think about, to try to imagine what their lives were like. A trio of kids sauntered by and greeted the policemen with a combination of daring, humour and hostility. The bad language didn’t seem to have much effect on Heffernan.
“Say nothing now,” said Macken. “But there’s our Bobby. He’s out.”
Minogue’s reaction was to be cautious, to look for cover. Heffernan seemed amused.
“There’s only Eddsy and the other fella in there now,” he said. “Don’t be worrying. They know the most of us who’ve been on duty here.”
“The state of him,” Kilmartin murmured. “Walks like a gorilla. Look, the knuckles nearly running along the ground beside him.”
And he does, thought Minogue. Bobby Egan had emerged from his brother’s shop as he had entered-alone. He glanced up and down the street before settling on the unmarked Corolla and raising his eyebrows in greeting.
“Oh, here we go,” said Heffernan. “See what kind of a humour the bold Bobby is in this morning.”
“You mean he comes over to you?”
“ ’Course he does. For the chat, man. I mean to say, we’re in the same business, aren’t we? Almost. If we were social workers, he’d be our client, wouldn’t he, Ger?”
“Our case, yes. Bobby’s a case, all right. A head-case.”
“Loves a dare,” said Heffernan. “Smart the way only a header is smart. Bobby’d eat you alive for a joke. Know what I’m saying?”
Something in Heffernan’s tone of bored wisdom pinged a bull’s-eye in Minogue’s mind.
“Oh, shit,” said Macken. “Here we go now.”
Bobby Egan ambled with a rolling gait to the car. He rubbed his hands and bent over, head next to the open window. Chewing gum slowly, heavy brows, a wide face under close-cropped hair. His eyes looked very blue. Was that a scar by his neck? Though Bobby Egan’s face close up still retained a scuffed look, Minogue could see none of the malevolence he had expected. He was well turned-out. His polo shirt had a pricey logo on it, an alligator thing, and the trousers had a sharp fold. Minogue tried to read any inscriptions on the bracelet Egan fingered.
“ ’S’lads. How’s it going.”
The smile looked genuine, thought Minogue. He nodded back.
“How’s Bobby,” said Heffernan.
“Oh, topping. And four of yous? Of a Saturday? Oooh. Very heavy, lads. Here all night again, were yiz?”
Heffernan kept up his scrutiny of an approaching van.
“You know yourself, Bobby.” Egan shrugged.
“Wouldn’t want the marriage to go on the rocks on account of having to work nights now, would we? Who’re the reinforcements in the back there?”
For an instant Minogue felt the urge to jump out of the car and go nose to nose with Bobby Egan. Was this fastidious thug the one who had slammed the senses out of Mary Mullen, slid her into the water to drown?
“CIA,” said Macken. “But keep that to yourself. It’s top secret.”
“Ha ha! Such a panic yiz are. Fella here looks like a farmer.”
Minogue stared back into Egan’s eyes.
“Well, as long as yous’re only cops, I don’t mind.”
Egan tapped on the roof and cleared his throat.
“All right so, lads. Keep it up. We all feel real safe here now, knowing that yous are around and all. Here-go in and support local enterprise here. Buy a packet of fags or something. The brother needs the money.”
He hawked and spat across the roof.
“Be seeing yous. By the way, where’s the other van, the telephone one? All the video and gear? Did one of the young lads around here rob it on you?”
Heffernan grinned and flicked his eyes skyward.
“Helicopter, Bobby,” he said. “One of the new ones, a spy one from the States. Can’t see it, can’t hear it-but it’s there all the time.”
Egan glanced up and sniggered.
“Oh, you had me there! Yous are gas! Funnier every day.”
Minogue watched Egan climb into the Lancia. He tooted the horn as he drove away.
“Bastard,” said Kilmartin. “He doesn’t know how close he is. I’d like to be there when the time comes.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Minogue. Heffernan looked over.
“How close is he to getting his wings clipped anyway?” Minogue asked.
“Well, you’d need to be up on the, em…”
“ ‘The Big Picture’?”
Heffernan’s meaty hands tapped the steering wheel.
“That’s the size of it,” he said. “I know, I know. We heard ye wouldn’t back down at all. But we’ve been after the Egans for years. We have to go for the whole thing, the whole racket, you understand? It’s not just one, well…”
“Just one murder,” said Minogue.
Heffernan pursed his lips and shrugged.
“Do you think it’s fun and games for us?” asked Macken. He sat forward in the seat, his face not a foot from Minogue’s. “See the names at the bottom of the sheet? Me and O’Hare? It’s our surveillance work that puts Bobby in the clear for the night of that murder you’re trying to sort out.”
Minogue nodded.
“So don’t be asking us what Tynan asked us here a few months back,” Heffernan added.
“Tynan?” asked Kilmartin.
“The very X,” said Heffernan. “Never in sixteen years did I hear of a Garda Commissioner sitting in on a surveillance unannounced. Drove up here one day on his own, didn’t he, Ger?”
“An Alfa Romeo,” said Macken. “Flag-red. Like a fire engine. Street threads.”
“Oh, yes,” said Heffernan. “Waltzes over to us. I’m having a stroke, I don’t mind telling you-”
“Thought it was something he et,” said Macken. “Seeing things, like?”
“ ‘Mind if I sit in?’ says Tynan. What am I going to say?”
“Ask him if he has a twin brother who’s the Commissioner,” said Macken, “and then tell him to shag off?”
Minogue smiled.
“So in he gets,” said Heffernan. “Just like you sitting there. Sits there for about twenty minutes watching the comings and goings. Hardly says one word. Gets up then, goes across the street and into the shop. Comes out a few minutes later. Throws a few bags of crisps in the window-”
“Mars bar too.”
“-Mars bar too. Don’t know whether to laugh or what. ‘Thanks,’ says I.”
“Cheese and Onion,” said Macken. “The crisps, like.”
“I mean, we all heard that Tynan’s a real pit bull when he gets his teeth into something. Look out, etcetera. You could tell he was bulling when he came out of the shop. Livid, like. Face didn’t change expression, of course.”
“That a fact,” said Kilmartin.
“Lips didn’t move,” said Heffernan, nodding. “Doesn’t get back in the car. Just stands there, staring back at the shop. Like he’s sizing it up for demolition. The fingers doing drum rolls on the roof. Says-and I’m sure he was talking to himself now-says, ‘How is it that those reptiles are still abroad?’ Didn’t he, Ger?”
Macken nodded.
“Dead on,” he said. “ ‘Abroad,’ I was thinking, you know? Thought he meant a holiday or something. Didn’t twig, the way he said it.”
“And that was when the big push started. Revenue woke up, Customs and Excise fellas started to attend the meetings. Branch Inspectors. Technicals. Task Force fellas who would step over your dead body in the hall in the normal run of things. Staff; equipment; overtime coming out our ears. Jam on the bread, the whole bit. I don’t care what anyone says about Tynan. The Iceman; the Monsignor. Tell you this: he’s the man to nail the Egans.”
“Reptiles,” said Kilmartin. He elbowed Minogue and nodded toward the Citroen.
Heffernan looked over at him.
“Are you going in to see Eddsy then?”
Eddy Egan, Eddsy, thought Minogue. A crippled reptile who commissioned pornographic pictures of girls trapped in poverty, in lousy jobs, desperate for a better life.
“I think we will.”
Kilmartin’s jaw was hanging but his eyes told Minogue enough. He put on his best blithe smile. Maybe he should have two pints of beer every lunch-time while the heat wave lasted. He stepped out onto the road and looked across the roof of the Toyota at Kilmartin.
“Are we right, Jim?”
Kilmartin caught up with Minogue before he reached the door of the shop.
“Right for what? What the hell are we up to? Wait a minute there!”