Gone to hell,” Joey Byrne muttered. His wife was staring at the grass by the water’s edge.
“What,” she said
He studied the broken glass and the flattened balls of tissue at his feet. He’d found another syringe here last week. The dog pulled against the leash and nosed into the long grass. He let his eyes wander back to the neck of a bottle bobbing in the weeds. At least it hadn’t been smashed here on the path. Four, no, five of those condoms today already too. Rings where they were unrolled. Out here by the banks of the canal, here in the middle of the city of Dublin, there were people putting on those things and going at it. Had they no shame?
He sighed and yanked on the leash. The dog lifted its leg. He turned to his wife.
“Come on now, Mary. We’ll be off.”
His wife of seventy-five rose slowly from the bench. He looked back up the canal. Away from the lock the canal’s surface was a mirror. There were no swans this evening. The streetlamps were popping on one by one. God Almighty, he thought, the mess they’d made of Dublin. Poxy yellow lights like a jail, office blocks that belonged in the middle of Arizona. Mary was up at last. She moved stiffly to his side and grabbed his arm. He glanced down at her. The operation last year had aged her ten years. She’d never be back up to par. It had taken them twenty minutes to walk to the canal tonight. He knew because he had timed it.
“God, Joey, I’m stiff as a board. ”
He bit back the words which sprang to his lips. It wasn’t her fault that she needed new hips. But was he himself stuck now, plodding along next to her for the rest of his life? He was seventy-six, by God, but he could leg it out with men half his age. He’d lose that too if he wasn’t careful.
“What’s the hurry, Joey?”
“Now, Timmy!”
No doubt about it: the Jack Russell was the best. You could throw your hat at the rest of them. There wouldn’t be a rat alive within a mile of a Jack Russell’s home.
“Joey! Easy there! I’m not as quick as I was.”
Her hand tightened on his arm. He thought of the times they had made their way down these footpaths, along this stretch of the canal, in all weathers. Fifty years and more. There’d always been courting couples here but it had never been so sleazy, so dirty. He remembered the white rings of the condoms discarded by the path.
“Honestly. Do you ever see the swans here of a summer’s evening any more? Not on your life, I’m telling you. They’re gone too. That’s how smart they are. After eight o’clock, even the swans know the writing’s on the bloody wall here. If only the other animals… Ah, what’s the use.”
She stopped and took a deep breath.
“Those things,” she said. “The rubbers? Is that what you mean?”
He looked down at her. All this smut on the telly: safe sex, etcetera. Was she smiling?
“Do you have to talk like that? Do you?”
She clutched at his arm again. She was breathing hard when they gained the footpath. He looked back down at the water. Mary murmured something between wheezes. There was violet on the canal now. They’d waited until the evening so that the bloody traffic and noise was gone, so as they could take a simple walk down by the canal. Was that asking too much, not to have to put up with chancers coming by looking for a bit of how’s-your-father? Drugs. Something stirred in his stomach and burrowed in behind his ribs. He’d seen them the other day too, with their skirts up around their backsides. Standing there smoking, staring back at him; sneering, bold as brass: brassers.
“Where are the Guards when you need them, I’d like to know. I think they’ve given up, that’s what I think. They don’t care, do they.”
“What Guards?”
The Jack Russell strained at the leash again. He yanked on the strap. The dog stood on its hind legs.
“God and it’s still so hot out,” she said. She pulled on his arm. She was smiling, he saw.
“Joey. Remember you used to go for a swim here? You and Tom and Ernie and the lads. God be with the days. Do you remember?”
He hated her asking questions like that. He could still make out the matte of weeds and scum on the surface. The bark startled him. Timmy had moved between Mary and him. The terrier had planted his front paws on the stone anchors for the railings and was staring at the canal bank. He drew hard on the leash. The dog braced its legs and barked again.
“Now Timmy! Give over.”
He tugged but the dog still pulled back. A rat, he thought. That’s all they needed.
“Come on now, boy. Go after them another day. Come on.”
A car raced past with a thumping sound pouring out its windows. Joey Byrne pulled the dog away from the railings. He didn’t turn to his wife when he spoke.
“Come on, Mary, we’ll be off home. Before the bloody vampires are out in force.”
The detective crouched and drew out a pistol.
“Oh, here we go,” murmured Kilmartin. “Out comes the shooter. About time too.”
The detective was a woman. She was dressed in dark clothes. She had chased the suspect who had shot her partner into a poorly lit alleyway.
“Here, Molly,” said Kilmartin. “What do you think of that?”
Detective Thomas Malone cleared his throat.
“She’s got all the moves,” he said. “I think she’s going to come out of it all right.”
“Matt?”
“He’s up behind that dumpster,” said Minogue. The three policemen watched her inch her way along the wall of the alley, the pistol grasped upright in her hands. A police siren sounded in the middle distance.
“He is not,” said Kilmartin. “It’s too bloody obvious. Isn’t it, Molly?”
Malone glanced at Minogue before answering.
“She’s probably better trained than we are,” he said. “At going up alleys after drug dealers carrying guns, like.”
She sprang away from the wall and took up a shooting stance behind the dumpster. Nothing.
“Told you,” said Kilmartin. “He’s done a bunk. Long gone.”
“Oh, oh,” said Minogue. Kilmartin strained to see what his friend and colleague Inspector Matthew Minogue had spied.
“On the ledge,” said Malone. “He must have climbed up.”
“He did on his arse climb up on any bloody ledge,” snapped Kilmartin. “Sure wasn’t he shot the once already? A fat lot of climbing… Oh, now I see him.”
“She was never trained to look up, I think,” said Minogue.
“Hoi,” Kilmartin called out. “Look out up there-what’s her name?”
“Karen,” said Malone.
“Karen! Look up, for the love of God!”
A shot rang out. A figure fell from the darkness overhead and landed in the dumpster.
“Smooth bit of work there,” said Kilmartin. “Into the bin with the bastard. Nice work, Karen. I thought your goose was cooked.”
“It wasn’t her plugged him,” said Malone. Kilmartin eyed him under a raised eyebrow.
“That a fact now? Well, who was it, if it wasn’t Karen herself?”
“There he is coming down the alley now.”
“Wait a shagging minute,” Kilmartin called out. “That’s the partner who got shot, the fella risked his life to save her! What the hell is he doing there?”
“He was only winged,” said Minogue. “He’s obviously a tough nut. See the arm hanging off him there?”
Kilmartin shook his head.
“Well, seeing is believing, isn’t it? I was sure he was a goner. Gave his all for the female rookie on the job. Karen.”
“Are you okay?” Karen asked her partner. He hadn’t shaved. He was undercover.
“I been better,” he said, and grinned. She tapped him on his good shoulder.
“Hope she has the safety on,” murmured Kilmartin. Malone picked up his glass.
“What’s the story with the gouger in the bin,” he said. A squad car came tearing down the alley. Minogue turned away when the ad for Guinness came on. Malone drained his glass and headed for the toilet. Kilmartin’s face gleamed in the light of the television.
“What kind of weather is this,” he grunted. “Day after day of tropical I-don’t-know-what.”
The three policemen were temporarily truant from a wedding reception for Detective Garda Seamus Hoey, a colleague of theirs on the Murder Squad. To the consternation of many, Hoey had taken a leave of absence several months ago and flown out to Botswana to be with his fiancee Aine. He had stayed for two months helping to build a medical centre in the village where Aine had begun lay missionary work. Amoebic dysentery had floored Aine and Hoey had accompanied her back to Ireland. It had become doubtful whether she’d return to Botswana at all. Hoey had reported to the Inspector that Aine had asked him to marry her. Minogue often wondered if Hoey had told Aine that he had half-heartedly tried to kill himself some months previous to his leave of absence.
That letter which Aine-a woman he hardly knew even yet-had written him from Botswana still puzzled Minogue. She had thanked the Inspector for “all he had done for Seamus and myself.” He took that to mean the bullying he’d done to get Hoey his job back on the Murder Squad.
Kilmartin examined the bottom of his glass. Minogue did not take the hint.
“I thought it was a joke at first,” grunted Kilmartin. “Honest to God.”
“The wedding?”
“Maybe. No, the messing with the drink, I meant. With the no drink, I should say.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it now, but Shea’s a recovering alcoholic.”
“So the likes of me has to pour that stuff in the bowl into me gullet?”
“I don’t know now, James. I rather enjoyed the punch myself.”
“ ‘Punch,’ is it? Fairy piss. Turned me stomach, so it did.”
Minogue looked around the pub. The tables were covered with empty glasses. A girl with yellow and pink hair, a tattoo of a snake on her shoulder and a black tank top was looking at Kilmartin. The man next to her wore a half-dozen ear-rings. His head was shaved bald up to a topknot. Kilmartin returned the woman’s stare for several moments.
“Welcome to civilisation,” he muttered. He waved to the barman and called for drinks. He rubbed his hands and fell to looking at the bottles on the shelves.
“Never been to a dry wedding in me life. Honest to God. Can’t even spell Methodist. As for getting married in a registry office, well… At least Aine gave God a look in.”
Minogue raised an eyebrow.
“I meant the few bits of things she said right after signing the forms,” said Kilmartin. “The ‘God is love’ thing. Of course, she’s deep enough into the religion and all. Missionary, of course. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
He lowered his brow and squinted at Minogue.
“But you and I well know she’ll have her work cut out for her with Hoey-sure he’s a hairy pagan. Your influence, I might add. Oh well, love is blind.”
Minogue eyed the Chief Inspector.
“ ‘God is love,’ ” he said. “Right?”
“Good man,” said Kilmartin. “You’re getting the idea. There’s hope for you yet.”
“And ‘Love is blind.’ Right?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking.”
“Then God is blind. Right?”
Kilmartin gave him a hard look.
“Depend on you to come up with that. You ignorant savage. Hey. That, ah, lump of rock thing you gave Hoey and Aine for a present? Don’t get me wrong now. But, well, what the hell is it exactly?”
“It’s a stone I took from the beach at Fanore. A friend of Iseult’s did the work on it.”
Kilmartin stopped rubbing his eyes and looked at Minogue with a pained expression.
“A stone. Okay. But what’s it supposed to be?”
“Iseult’s friend put the faces on it.”
“Oh. Faces. Sorry.”
“You’re supposed to feel them with your fingers more than just see them.”
Kilmartin’s expression slid into one of happy disdain.
“Is it for the missus to feck at Hoey in their first scrap maybe? Here, do you know how much I paid for that bloody Waterford glass Hoey has on his mantelpiece from this happy day forward? Well, I’ll tell you how much. Eighty-seven quid.”
“A beautiful piece it is, James.”
“You’re not codding, it is. And what do I get? All Hoey had to do was say two simple words, two words normal people use: cash bar. Would that have been such a mortaller?”
The barman planted the drinks on the counter and looked to Kilmartin. The Chief Inspector took out his wallet with a show of great reluctance, eying Minogue all the while.
“A bit slow on the draw there, aren’t you?”
Minogue shrugged and listened to the weather woman relating the prospects of another hot day tomorrow. Kilmartin glared at the barman and held out a tenner.
“Fella beside me’s throwing money around here like a man with no arms.” The barman grinned.
Kilmartin wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Christ. Fallen among thieves, I have. With you, it’s the short arms and the long pockets; with Hoey, it’s the bloody Prohibition all over again. Place is gone to hell, that’s all I can say.”
Minogue swallowed more lager, placed the glass on the counter and licked his lips.
“It’s hard on him, Jim. Hard on Aine too. The drink is a curse.”
Kilmartin grasped his pint of ale and gave Minogue a hard look.
“Huh. Married man now, by God, oh yes! ‘Aine says this’ and ‘Aine says that.’ Lah-dee-dah. More of the usual. Another good man out in the wind.”
Kilmartin took a long draught and patted his stomach. Malone was chatting to a couple sitting at the far end of the bar.
“Will you look at that,” muttered the Chief Inspector. “Molly will probably want the pint I just bought him delivered down the far end of the bloody bar.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be seen in public with two bogmen like us, Jim.”
With careful deliberation, Kilmartin placed his glass on the counter and turned to face Minogue. The Inspector looked away from the weather forecast and returned Kilmartin’s stare.
“You’re sailing a bit close to the wind with that one, mister. Yes, you! Oh, and the face on you like a goat pissing on a bed of nettles! Do you think for one minute that I want to be seen in public with the likes of a Dublin gurrier like Molly there? Do you think I wanted him on staff at all? What damage bloody Tynan didn’t finish doing to the Squad, you did. You and Sometimes shagging Earley.”
Kilmartin grasped his glass, gave an angry flick of his head and downed more ale. Minogue returned to the weather forecast in time to hear mention of high pressure remaining over Ireland.
John Tynan, the new Garda Commissioner whose nickname Kilmartin had lately alternated between Monsignor and Iceman, had reorganised the Murder Squad and its parent Technical Bureau. Kilmartin had fought hard to preserve his fiefdom. Tynan had had several conditions for allowing Kilmartin to keep his Squad intact. The Chief Inspector was to cut permanent staff numbers, and he was to set up an interview board for screening and interviewing applicants to the Squad. With Seamus Hoey gone for a two-week honeymoon, and with court attendance and casework backlogged, Kilmartin had secured an extra position for this year, a ‘floater’ on the Squad. He and Minogue and Sometimes Earley, an avuncular Inspector from B Division rumoured to be on the fast track to the top, had interviewed from a short list of applicants for that position.
Detective Garda Thomas Malone had been fourth in line. Minogue ascribed the detour in his nose and the close-cropped hair to what was listed in the file as “Sporting Interests”: Tommy Malone was still ranked second in the Garda Boxing Club. A stocky Dubliner with postcard blue eyes and a laconic manner which Minogue sensed was studied rather than natural, Malone had not been Kilmartin’s favourite. Minogue still smiled in recollection of Kilmartin’s aggressive questioning during the interview and the results it had brought him. Why was Malone’s brother in jail, was Kilmartin’s opener. He’d messed up, was Malone’s reply. What experience did the candidate think he could bring to the Squad? Malone had enumerated the record of service and commendations from his file in a tone which suggested to Minogue that he, Malone, knew that Kilmartin had read it. Kilmartin had pressed him again with the same question, altering it only by adding a really and giving Malone a deeper frown. Earley too had almost laughed out loud at the reply. Experience, Malone had replied after a calculated pause. Living with me brother, I suppose. Earley had had difficulty stifling a snigger.
Minogue’s and Barley’s combined votes had produced a black mood in Chief Inspector Kilmartin which buying him three glasses of whiskey after the interviews hadn’t much lightened.
Part of Kilmartin’s stock-in-trade was nicknames and he wasted no time in setting to work on Malone. ‘Molly Malone’ was too easy, he liked to grumble. Kilmartin’s atavistic disdain for Dubliners, their championing of trade unions and their votes for the Labour Party at the expense of the rurally based populist carpetbagger party he, James Kilmartin, had supported all his life, gave birth to a nickname which Minogue thought had the most bite: ‘Voh’ Lay-bah.’ Decades in Dublin had honed Kilmartin’s mimic abilities and he could manage an accomplished delivery in the classic ponderous, nasal Dublin drawl. Malone seemed to be weathering Kilmartin’s sarcasm well.
Kilmartin balanced his glass on his palm.
“Oh well, what the hell,” he said at last. “Here’s to Hoey. Whatever else you could say about Shea Hoey, he’s no gom. He’ll soon learn to put the foot down. Did you see where she keeps her own name and everything? What’s the point, I’d like to know.”
Minogue said nothing. He believed Aine’s maiden name, Moriarty, was too good of a name to walk away from. Kilmartin lit a cigarette.
Minogue took another mouthful of lager. The Chief Inspector began tugging at the loose skin under his chin.
“Eighty-eight quid actually,” he murmured. “That Waterford glass bowl I gave Hoey.”
Malone made his way back to the two detectives just as the barman laid down another round of drinks. Kilmartin eyed Malone sorting a handful of change. He winked at Minogue as he called out to Malone.
“Hoi,” he said. “What poor-box did you rob to get that fistful there, Molly?”
Malone’s eyebrows inched up but he kept counting.
He stepped on his cigarette and stared at the car. It wasn’t just the heat, he knew, that made him feel that his chest was full of smoke. His hands were tingling too. The dryness in his mouth had spread to his throat. He might get forty for the leather jacket on the back seat. Probably a tenner for the Walkman. As for the bloody racquets and the bag, he hadn’t a clue.
The driver had activated the alarm with the remote on his key-ring. Tall type, hair-do, nice clothes. Tennis, etcetera. He’d probably gone to one of those snob schools where they played rugby. Daddy had bought Junior a car for his twenty-first. Not this model though: a GTI cost over fifteen grand. Junior must have gotten a job. Maybe he’d gotten the girl free with the car. How was it that rich people never looked ugly? He’d smelled perfume hanging in the air when he’d walked by the car the first time. He held up his watch and twisted it until he got enough light on it to read it. Five minutes to closing time in the pubs. He’d have to go soon or else forget it. Then he might have to do something stupid in broad daylight tomorrow to get back on track. Otherwise, it’d be shitsville. That had happened last week. He’d messed up by sleeping it out until nearly dinner-time. It had taken him until four o’clock to round up enough money to score. That was a day to forget: out there on the footpath boiling in the frigging sun all day, ready to grab people and throttle them until they dropped money in his hat. It wasn’t like he was begging, for Christ’s sake. He was an artist. It was art they’d be supporting. Jesus, people paid thousands for some painting to hang on a bloody wall.
He couldn’t stop his mind wandering. He. imagined a huge drawing of Jim Morrison, a crowd half a dozen thick swarming around him, all oohing and aahing. Purples, yellows-the spotlights, maybe even some lyrics on the top. Put in Jimi Hendrix floating there somewhere too. Bob Marley. A black angel. That was the stuff to get tourists coughing up dough. You never know who’d be walking by on the streets during the summer. Dublin had a name for talent in the music scene. Some big exec from a record company might spot it: hey, we gotta have this guy doing our covers! Or something with a message on it? Save the whales. Just say no. Ah, there were too many iijits out pretending to be real chalkies now. He really should try looking for a steady. If he had a steady number for a job, he could plan. Join a fitness club or something. Get some exercise. Then he could handle it cold turkey. Not that he actually had a habit or needed to worry. It’d be no sweat when the time came. All it took…
Something caught in his throat and he began coughing. The bloody city was full of dust and dirt. He looked up through the yellow light at the sky. Buildings going down, new ones being put up all over the place. His coughing began to ease and he looked across at the GTI again. Four cars back was the alley leading into a building site with a half-dozen ways out to other laneways and streets. The handles of the plastic bag holding the brick dug into his fingers. His fingertips had gone numb. He moved the bag to the other hand and swung it in short arcs. Its motion gave him strength. He imagined the car window shattering, a shower of glass in slow motion exploding around him. Ten minutes gone. He let two cars pass and stepped out into the street. He couldn’t stop staring at the GTI now. It seemed to move, to float. He put his palm on his chest but his heart thumped harder.
“Deserved it,” he murmured.
Mister GTI had been in such a bleeding hurry to get into the pub for last call that he’d parked in a stupid place. He was probably a wheeler-dealer who made money just picking up a phone. Maybe he played the stock market or something. He had holidays in Spain or the States, someplace where all the women have blonde hair and look like models. He looked over the roof of the car at the glass-sheathed building behind it. Christ, he thought, and shuddered. All glass: someone could see out but he couldn’t see in. No, he thought then. If it was dark outside. The lights in the building were on so you could see in and they couldn’t… or was it? The glass held only the violet and yellow of the night street. Even the cleaners’d be gone home now.
He stepped out of the shadow. In the window opposite he saw himself sliding, misshapen and jerky across its surface, the bag beside him. He felt a sudden rage at his own fear and his weakness. He really should try to get someone else in on these jobs, even if it meant splitting the take and having to do more. Was that perfume still hanging in the air? Leaking out of the bloody car. Bastards have everything they want. He swung the bag and turned as the weight pulled his arm up. The bag rose to its full height overhead, came down with a thump on the hatchback window and fell through.
The car alarm shrieked. He yanked the bag out of the hole and swung again. It hit dead on. The hole in the glass was the size of a television screen now. The perfume coming out of the hole in the clouded window stung high up in his nose. He grabbed the leather jacket and threw it to the ground. His fingers scrabbled at the limit of his arm’s reach for the Walkman. He leaned in until his feet came off the pavement. A camera too. Must have been under the coat. The alarm’s shrieking seemed to be lighting up the whole street, knifing into his brain. The tennis racquets came out handy enough. He used one to tap out more glass. Headlights turned into the street. He scooped up the jacket, stuffed the Walkman and the camera into it and held the racquets over the bundle. Someone shouted from far off as he entered the alley. It swallowed most of the alarm’s shrieking. He kept going. This bit was a kick in itself. He was proud of how he could still run. The close, thick air rubbed against his face. He was grinning. The alarm began to fade behind him.
Minogue was massaging his feet in the kitchen when the beeper went off. He closed his eyes, rubbed his face and swore before plucking it from his belt and clicking it off. It was half past one.
Kathleen tripped down the top of the stairs, her dress over her arm.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Minogue looked up from the pager.
“Yes, indeed.”
He went upstairs and changed while Kathleen filled a plastic bag with a sandwich, a banana, two biscuits and two tins of soda water. He picked up the beeper, looked again at the dot-matrix display flowing across the face and plotted his shortest route to the canal. At least he’d travel in style. He reversed his new car, a Citroen with electric everything and the new-car smell as potent as ever, out onto the road. He yawned most of the journey to Donnybrook where he nicked a red light at fifty-five, slowed a little for the bend and sped up again along Morehampton Road. He was awake and even alert in plenty of time to flout the no-right-turn at Leeson Street bridge. A satisfying rasp of tires came to him over the rush of night air in from the sunroof. He crossed Baggot Street bridge and parked under the trees where a small crowd stood. The yellow plastic cordon tape was up already.
Kilmartin was on him as he stepped out of the car.
“How’s James. Long time no see.”
Kilmartin yawned and peered in the window behind Minogue.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Hard to miss that UFO of yours there. How do you figure out all those fecky-doo buttons on the dash there? Anyway. Looks like Molly beat us to it. Jeepers creepers, why’d we buy those beepers?”
Minogue saw that Malone already had gloves on.
“Howiya, Tommy,” he said. “Long here?”
“Five minutes,” replied Malone. Kilmartin nodded at the gloved hands.
“You didn’t jump in for a swim and look already, did you, Molly?”
“No. I taped it off. Waiting for the lights. It’s a woman. I called the Sub Aqua.”
Kilmartin turned on his heel and made a slow examination of the street.
“Yeah,” said Malone. He nodded at a couple sitting on a bench being interviewed by a Garda. The girl was shivering.
“That pair there. It was the girl saw her first. Green stuff on it, weeds and things.”
Tings, thought Minogue. Gree-an.
“They better get married after that carry-on,” Malone added. “He’d dropped the hand.”
“What?” asked Kilmartin.
“He had his hand in her knickers when she saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“The body.” Malone had left just enough of a pause to suggest humour to Minogue.
“Was that all then?” asked the Chief Inspector.
“Hard to say. He might’ve gone the whole hog if she hadn’t started screaming-”
“I didn’t mean that!” barked Kilmartin. “I meant if she saw or heard anything in the bloody canal!”
Solemn-faced yet, Malone shook his head.
“I just had a few questions with them,” he murmured. “Then I let what’s-his-face get on with an interview. The uniform from Harcourt Street. Fallon.”
Kilmartin looked up and down the banks. Streetlights played on the sluggish waters under the trees, themselves looming, black masses darker than the night sky. Minogue smelled beery breath from the gawkers. He looked at the banks and spotted small pieces of styrofoam, coloured and slick things he took to be plastic bags. Kilmartin was talking.
“Why’s there not more of her on the surface, I’d like to know.” He grasped the railing leading up to the boards which formed the lock’s foot-bridge.
“She drifted maybe,” said Malone. “The hair got caught in the lock. Then the undercurrent pulled the feet and the legs in tight?”
Minogue noted Kilmartin’s expression. Malone might well be right. A body in water often floated almost upright. Kilmartin was looking from light to light.
“Several lights out of commission,” said Minogue. “It shouldn’t be so dark here.”
“Gurriers no doubt,” Kilmartin grunted. “Pegging rocks at the street-lamps. Is this news? Dublin’s fair city, my arse. Any sign of our crew yet?”
“Here they are now,” said Minogue. Kilmartin looked over the other side of the lock-gate. A cascade of water arched from the brimming canal below his size twelve brogues and splattered far below. He turned back to Minogue and looked over his shoulder at the crowd.
“Get the lights up,” he said to Malone. “Video. Pronto.”
“Damn,” Kilmartin went on. “Wouldn’t you know it? I have to water the horse.”
Minogue yawned as he made a quick survey of the scene, and then made his way through the crowd. Air thick with the smell of the canal seemed to settle in his lungs. There were about two dozen gawkers now. He searched the faces close to him. An intense light flared suddenly beside him before it shifted down over the water. He turned to find Paddy Dillon, a Cavan man known for wearing his tweed jacket every working day of the year. The cut of Dillon’s jacket had become misshapen by his constant storage of batteries, clips, bolts, tapes and tools. Dillon hefted the camera onto his shoulder.
“How’s Paddy.”
“Ah, Matt, me oul standby. Steady, boy. Struggling, but steady.”
“Close again tonight, Paddy.”
“Aye, surely!” Dillon’s accent gave his voice a plaintive tone. “Close isn’t it, now. It must be the weather we get for throwing in our lot with a united Europe. Oh, yes. I must say now that I can do without this degree of heat. Yes, I can.”
Minogue gave Dillon’s tweed jacket a lingering glance but Dillon was already absorbed in something else.
“Run up and down the banks first, Paddy. Anybody moves off from the crowd, get a good look, will you? We’ll be on the prowl.”
Malone led Dillon down the bank.
The quartz light turned the black water khaki. The hair was too blonde to be natural, Minogue thought. Just below the surface, the face and neck looked phosphorescent in the glare. The shoulders were covered. He began to move through the gawkers.
“What’s the story here, Chief?” The query came from one of a trio of men in their twenties. All three bore the tired, blurry expressions of men who had been drinking.
“There’s somebody under the water,” said Minogue. “For an undue period of time, if you take my meaning. Has a Guard taken your names yet?”
“Jases, no! Sure I’m only walking by on me way to get a taxi. What would you, you know?”
Minogue had his notebook out.
“To be sure,” he said. “But we have procedures, now. Naturally ye’d want to help.”
The questions came automatically. Minogue knew the pub the men cited. He squinted at the three in turn while they spoke. The alarmed righteousness in their voices grated on him less because of its boozy earnestness than because it sounded exactly banal enough to be the truth. Instead of listening closely to the men, the Inspector found himself following the canal back inland in his mind’s eye. Fed from the River Shannon, it entered the city of Dublin channelled along by terraced houses and blocks of flats, past derelict warehouses and sheds. He thought of the grassy banks out by Crumlin, the skinny kids swimming by the locks years ago. Portobello, the pillars.
One of the men was getting agitated. He had remembered talking to the barman at exactly ten o’clock. Ten, wasn’t it, Lar, he kept saying to one of the others. Ten, right? Ruygh, Lar, waznit? Kilmartin would goad Malone plenty if he heard a Dublin accent like that. Minogue told him to calm down. He didn’t bother to ask him why he appeared so frantic to reassure a Guard.
Here in the south city centre, the canal water idled in the shade of trees. The architectural glacier which had begun to grind through Dublin in the early sixties had left the city pitted with office buildings so ugly that they absorbed light and space from the streets they had been driven into. Many of the most ferociously insipid of those buildings had been deposited by the canal. Pockets of older houses still remained by its banks, however, and several times over the years, the Inspector had noted the glossy red doors and the restored brickwork, the Saabs and the freshly painted railings. Sunday supplement style or not, he commended people for wanting to live here by the canal. Along with the daily ebb and flow of office workers and cars, they had soaring rates of burglary and car theft to contend with for their troubles.
“…and then I switched to the rum and Cokes. That was at last call, right, Lar?”
Minogue eyed Lar who gave him a tired smile and shrugged.
“So then we were sort of wondering where we’d go, you know? I was all on for getting a burger. Remember, Lar?”
Minogue scratched at his scalp with his pencil and stared out over the man’s head into the shadows beyond the lock. He remembered stopping the car by the canal bank some weeks ago to eye a nearly completed block of apartments by Percy Place. Sharp, aggressive corners, he recalled; windows in odd places and green-shaded glass; a lot of industrial-looking metalwork. Within a mile of where he now stood, the canal emptied into the docks where the River Liffey met Dublin Bay. Few craft came inland through those locks any more. Barges which had ferried Guinness and turf were decades disappeared from the canal, and aside from the few pleasure craft, the trickle of passenger traffic on the canal came from sporadic efforts to restore barges enough to get a licence to run cruise-and-booze trips between locks.
Episodic clean-ups had dredged up disheartening and marvellous tons of scrap from the canal. A youth group had found a 1957 Triumph motorbike in the canal some years ago and restored it to working order. A badly rusted rifle thought to have been thrown in during the Civil War had been placed in the museum. More people decried the degradation of the canal year by year. Something would have to be done. Minogue noted the same words cropping up in the Letters to the Editor: architectural rape; heritage; dastardly. There had been a symposium on the rebirth of the canal system, proposals of strict controls on planning permission, keen talk of demolishing some of the grosser buildings, of a rebirth.
“So there we are,” said Lar. “That’s how we got here.”
Minogue looked from face to face. They looked like schoolboys caught in a prank. One of them was swaying slightly. Someone stifled a belch. The Inspector let his eyes linger on the one who appeared most drunk. Then he checked his notes by asking one of the men the same questions about what he had been drinking. He eyed Lar, their erstwhile leader. They weren’t planning to drive home, were they? Christ, no-no way! Lar was very emphatic. His cohorts shook their heads a lot and murmured. Minogue checked their addresses and telephone numbers again. He eyed them again and let them go. He watched the lights playing on the surface of the water.
Minogue had walked the canal banks some weeks ago with his daughter, Iseult. It had been after a lunch when she had asked him some very odd questions about when he and Kathleen were courting. He had watched insects humming in the green light over the water while his daughter talked about her work. Lulled into a dreamy state by the lunch and the summer heat, he had fancied the stately passage of a barge as it glided by Pale towns and pastures of two hundred years ago. Over the low roar of traffic he even heard the ladies murmuring to one another under their parasols, the horse’s soft clop on the tow-path, the occasional calls of the bargee.
Minogue yawned and began to cast around for a ranking uniformed Guard. He caught sight of a sergeant. Callinan had a brother in HQ in the Park. He headed down the bank toward him and shook hands. Callinan, Donal Callinan, tugged at his ear and shifted his weight. His gaze stayed on the banks while he listened to the Inspector.
“Leave us a few lads to secure the site if you please, Donal. Might as well start the others up along the banks now. We’ll have the lights on proper in a few minutes, now.”
Callinan nodded and plodded off. Minogue sought out Dillon.
“Parked cars too, Paddy. Both sides of the canal and the opposite sides of the street.”
Dillon wiped his brow again. Heat or concentration had made his tone querulous.
“Right ye be, Matt. God, it’s dasprat hot.”
Minogue eyed Dillon’s jacket again.
“Give me a Polaroid, Paddy, will you? I want a few things here.”
Dillon nodded toward the van. Another technician Minogue could see only in silhouette against the interior light was setting up tripods under the lamps.
Kilmartin coughed next to him.
“There they are,” he said. Minogue turned and saw two vans from the Garda Sub Aqua unit reversing up the footpath. Kilmartin continued to adjust the sit of his trousers by standing on one leg and stretching out the other as he pulled at the waist.
“Man alive. Taking a leak behind a tree in the middle of Dublin. It’s degrading. It was that bloody punch at Hoey’s wedding, I’m telling you.”
“Not the few pints and the small ones?”
“Shag off. Get a real job. Away we go, now. Are we right?”
Minogue winked at Malone and followed Kilmartin under the tape.
Kilmartin sat down heavily on the bench, tore off the plastic gloves and lit a cigarette.
“The hair’s caught all right. Give the frogmen another minute.”
The smoke from Kilmartin’s cigarette rose and was caught in the glare of the lights.
“Damn,” he muttered. “This’ll shape up to be a right pain. Between the bloody water and the filth all up and down here… Hope to God we nail an admission or bulletproof evidence well away from this kip. We’re sunk if we have to rely on site evidence here, man.”
Malone stepped up the bank, shielding his eyes from the glare around the lock.
“Hoi, Molly. Any breakthroughs on the case yet?”
Malone’s face didn’t register the jibe. The gawkers had thinned down to a half-dozen. There were uniformed Guards from Donnybrook and Harcourt Street up and down the banks now. Feeney, a doctor on the coroner’s panel, was sitting in his car reading by the interior light, his legs out the door. He had wire-rimmed framed glasses with a tint and styled hair, something Minogue regarded as flagrant vanity in a man trying to walk away backwards from fifty.
“Got ahold of the lock-keeper,” said Malone. “Says the lock hasn’t been opened since the day before yesterday.”
“Unnk,” said Kilmartin. He cleared his throat. A frogman surfaced and grasped a rail by the lock. The slick black head gleamed and the goggles flashed as he shook his head.
“Can hardly see a bleeding thing down there,” said Malone. “Even with the lights.”
He had already relayed the frogman’s description to Missing Persons, Minogue knew.
“Well,” said Kilmartin. “Have to get her out. Let’s decide.”
“Open the lock a few inches, I say,” said Minogue. “Let her out slow.”
“Why not cut the hair?” asked Kilmartin. “And not risk flushing evidence down?”
Minogue didn’t know. He wished Hoey were here.
“We could secure her and open the gates a bit,” said Malone. “Pull her back then, like.”
“‘Loike,’” said Kilmartin. He alone smiled. Malone kept looking at the frogman’s head.
“All right,” said Kilmartin then. “Best idea I’ve heard yet. Go tell ’em to set it up.”
Minogue checked with Callinan. Still no shoes or handbag. Both officers watched Malone take the rope from the diver’s hand. Callinan scratched his armpit.
“Yiz are going to pull her out, is it,” he said.
“Send yours down to the bridge. See if anything goes through when we open it.”
Callinan joined the dozen Guards in shirtsleeves gathered by the lock. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the gawkers who remained, watching as the lock-keeper, a middle-aged man with no neck, white hair and a black moustache which had strained plenty of drink earlier in the night, readied the boom. The frogmen surfaced and moved to the bank. The stink they drew out of the waters wafted across to Minogue. Kilmartin and Malone stood next to the anchor of the railings where the nylon rope was tied. Malone signalled to the lock-keeper who pushed at the boom. Water began to spout, then to gush through the gap. The body stirred and drifted against the wood. Over the cascading water Minogue heard a low moan from the bystanders. It stopped abruptly when someone shouted. The shout had come from one of the frogmen. He donned his mask, chewed onto the mouthpiece and slid into the water with the pink safety rope trailing behind. The hair seemed to be sinking. Minogue stepped over to Kilmartin and looked at the rope tied to the body. It had grown slack.
“Bollicks,” said Malone. “Have we lost her?”
Kilmartin laid a hand on Malone’s arm and snorted.
Clearer as it ascended, the three policemen saw the blonde head appear, then the dark clothing Minogue took to be a blouse. A hand. A Guard hurriedly blessed himself. Malone began pulling on the rope. A blood vessel stood out on his neck. Then he relaxed.
“Close it up again!” Kilmartin called out. “She’s free.”