Dillon was sitting in the passenger seat of the van taping labels onto videocassettes. Minogue’s back ached now. He looked back at the white boiler suits by the water’s edge, the torch-beams wavering in the weeds.
“Anything yet?” Dillon asked.
“No, Paddy. We’ve sent the prints off.”
“Looks to me that she wasn’t long in it.”
“Do you think.”
“A few hours.”
“Is the side of her face clear on the tape you took?”
Dillon nodded.
“Hell of a belt and that’s no lie, Matt. She bruised. Died in the water too, I’ll bet you.”
Minogue returned to where Kilmartin and Malone were crouched. The woman’s body had been cradled in the water-stretcher and hoisted onto the bank. The Sub Aqua team had left the water a half-hour ago. They sat in their van waiting for Kilmartin to decide. The Chief Inspector stood up and took a deep breath. He unrolled the gloves, picking at the tips where they clung, and frowned into the lights trained on the water.
“No match to any recent call-ins?”
“No. They’ve started into Missing Persons.”
“Christ. Let’s see what Feeney makes of her now. We’ll let her go then.”
“Do we give the Sub Aqua mob the billy to leave, like?” asked Malone. Minogue saw the Chief Inspector’s lip curl a little. The Sub Aqua squad would never have asked Kilmartin himself.
“Yes, indeedy, Molly. They’re done with. Is Feeney ready to sign her over?”
Dr. Feeney stepped out of his car with a clipboard under his arm. He looked down the form.
“Body temperature…colour…well, she’s not dead more than six hours. A good look at the tissue on the table will tidy up that, but I’m pretty sure.”
Kilmartin raised an eyebrow.
“Anything you can make of the big bruise on the side of her face?”
“She was hit,” said Feeney. “I wouldn’t be surprised if her cheekbone’s fractured. I didn’t look at her teeth. Somebody, something big walloped her. The skin’s not split.”
“Her head rapped off a wall maybe?” asked Malone. Feeney blinked.
“A reasonable guess, er…”
“Garda Malone,” said Kilmartin. “Molly Malone, loike.”
Feeney’s grin fell away when he looked from Kilmartin to Malone’s face.
“Best I can do,” he said. “Leave it for the PM now.”
The three detectives watched as the body was carried to the van.
“Typed up, for the love of God,” said Kilmartin to Callinan. “And photocopies of the lads’ books. One of us will phone in the morning.”
“Okay,” said Callinan. “Yiz have your work cut out for you here by the look of things.”
The van door slammed. Kilmartin’s gaze lingered on Malone.
“Well, I don’t know now,” he said to Callinan. “We have one solid lead here.”
Callinan scratched under his arm again. “The trade here by the canal, like?”
“It’s relating to the perpendicular parking all right,” said Kilmartin. “She’s definitely not from Dublin.”
Callinan stopped scratching and eyed Minogue for a clue. Kilmartin’s eyes were wide but he wasn’t smiling.
“Didn’t spot it? Easy enough, I’d have thought. No? She had her knickers on.”
A startled look came to Callinan’s face. Malone looked down at his shoes. Kilmartin trudged off toward the lock again. Minogue followed him.
“Jimmy. Give over with the digs.”
“What digs?”
“It’s not the best time for Tommy to appreciate your, er, sense of humour.”
Kilmartin gave his colleague a hard look.
“That a fact now? He acts like he knows it all. The gloves on, the site taped up before we even get there. Calling in the frogmen. Walking around with the phone in his pocket. Cock of the walk.”
“So he’s keen, Jimmy.”
“Keen? He’s a gurrier is what he is. Hair-style cop. Television etcetera. Where does he think he is, LA, is it?”
“Just for the record-”
“Record-hah! It’s his brother has the record, isn’t it? Assault, three convictions-starting from the age of fourteen. B and E list the length of the Naas Road. The brother’s a druggie-”
“You’ve done a lot of homework on the brother, I can see.”
“A damn sight more than you have, and you handing Molly the frigging job! Ever hear the word genes?”
“Is he his brother’s keeper?” Kilmartin snorted and lit a cigarette.
“Oh, very slick one there. Very slick, to be sure. Say a decade of the rosary while you’re at it. Have you heard of heredity? How come one’s a Guard and the other’s a gouger?”
“Give him a chance at least, Jim. A fair trial, then you can hang him.”
Kilmartin pursed his lips. His eyelids drooped a little.
“There was a time when no one looked twice at the Squad, mister. I hired, I sired, I fired. It’s your mate, Mr. Refrigerator Tynan, left this bloody bomb behind him, the way he wanted the hiring done. He had me over a barrel, by God.”
“Look, Jim. Something has to give here with this. If it’s you and Tommy Malone together on this, there’ll be-”
“Skin and hair flying. I know, I know. It’s the heat. It’s his gurrier accent. It’s-”
“Let me put him through this one then. Himself and myself. I’ll show him the ropes.”
Kilmartin studied the lights playing on the water.
“Huh?”
“Well, all right. Better your rope than the one I’d like for him probably. Me and John Murtagh’ll hold down the back line then. I’ll pull him off the reviews. He can do the desk and feed us what comes in on the hoof from the teams. You and Molly can sweat it out here. Maybe being a Dublin jackeen might help on this one. Oh, yes.”
Minogue caught up with Malone.
“It’s you and me from here on, Tommy.”
“You mean it’s your turn to pick a row with me, is that it?”
Minogue stared at him.
“Sorry. It wasn’t you at all. It’s you-know-who.”
“James is from the County Mayo, remember. They were hard hit during the Famine.”
“So what’s his gig then, the Killer? Is he a shagging cannibal or something?”
“He wants you to prove yourself,” said Minogue. “Education by provocation.”
Malone frowned.
“Okay,” he said.
“Go home, can’t you,” said Minogue. “I’ll close up shop. It’ll take a few hours at least for the prints search. First thing in the morning we call a meeting to get everyone on board and go over what we have. Unless we get something coming up in between.”
The Inspector watched the Sub Aqua van inch down off the footpath above the bank. The driver raised a hand from the window as he drove off.
“We should have a preliminary with a cause of death by dinnertime. A bag or something might turn up in the daylight tomorrow. Might get a call come in from someone worried about her. We really need a name to get going in earnest here.”
It took Minogue a few moments to realize that there was no point looking for his jacket on the seat: he hadn’t brought one. Why bother with a jacket if it was going to be another day like yesterday? He remembered the feeling of being incomplete and the sense of freedom when he had backed out of the driveway. It was a quarter to nine. The heat wave hadn’t abated. He was dopey. That yellow, metallic tint in the sky he’d noted on his drive through Ranelagh was something he associated with the end of a hot summer’s day here in Dublin, not the morning. As he penetrated through to the city centre, it seemed to him that the streets and even the buildings had changed colours in a subtle way his eye registered but his brain couldn’t confirm. A cement lorry trapped him for several minutes by a building site. Dust in the air seemed to vibrate with the thumping of pneumatic drills. Through an opening in the hoardings he spied foundations of yet another office building. His back was wet when he stepped out of the Citroen in the carpark.
“Ah. Eilis. La brea brothollach.”
She spared him a smile for his recollection of the cliches beaten into generations of students by schoolteachers exacting essays in Irish.
“…ag scoilteagh no gcloc le teas,” she sighed. She retrieved her cigarette from the ashtray and reached for a file next to a snow-dome souvenir of Lourdes on the top shelf behind her.
“Your business by the canal last night. Mary Mullen. She has a record. Had, I meant to say.”
Minogue opened the file and slid out the photocopies, a summary from the CRO.
“May your shadow never grow less, Eilis.”
He looked at Mary Mullen’s face. Four years ago: Mary Frances Mullen, eighteen. Twenty-two and a half when she was killed. She hadn’t been at all pleased to have her picture taken. Kilmartin had guessed right. Three arrests in one year for soliciting. Either she had quit then or she had smartened up enough to avoid getting caught again. The first arrest listed her occupation as hairdresser at Casuals, South Great Georges Street. The second and third listed her as unemployed. On her third conviction, Mary Mullen had been committed to the women’s wing of Mountjoy prison. There she’d served two months of a three-month sentence. Minogue skipped through the file. Under Associates, he read “Egans?”. Mary Mullen had not been co-operative. No admission of pimp, friends, associates. An arresting Guard had annotated in pen: “v. defiant and uncooperative; bad language, etc.” What had he expected, Minogue wondered.
Tommy Malone appeared by his desk.
“Here we go, Tommy. Mary Mullen. Last known address was in Crumlin.”
“Never saw heat like it,” moaned Kilmartin from the doorway. “Saw an ad today for one of those air-conditioner jobs to fit the window. I’m putting me name in for one.”
The Chief Inspector’s leather soles scraped and squeaked their way closer. Minogue didn’t look up. He finished copying the address and reached for the telephone book.
“Mary Mullen,” said the Chief Inspector.
“Nothing new in from the scene?” Minogue murmured. “Bag?”
Kilmartin shook his head.
“And don’t hold your breath on that either. See who’s in that file? Egans.”
“Gangsters, racketeers and thugs limited,” said Minogue. “Or unlimited, I should say.”
“But that file’s static for over three years. I phoned Doyler in the whore squad. Left a message to look up any material they have to update us.”
Minogue looked up from the file.
“Did you ever get your hair done at a place called Casuals? The bit you have left, I mean.”
Kilmartin tugged at the end of his nose.
“Is this one of those knock-knock jokes or something?”
“A hairdresser’s.”
“Are you blind, man? Short back and sides since Adam was a boy. Yes, siree, as nature intended. Grass doesn’t grow on a busy street anyway, mister. Casuals, huh? Sounds like a front office for a bit of you-know-what. Phone-a-whore etcetera. Modern times, pal. Right there, Molly?”
Minogue glared at the Chief Inspector. Foe and accomplice both, Kilmartin could well turn out to be right in his guess. No Casuals in the current Dublin area telephone book. No Mullen in St. Lawrence O’Toole Villas in Crumlin either. Minogue clapped the phone book shut.
“Well?”
“Gone since the last book, or else there’s no phone in the house.”
“Phone Crumlin station. What’s his name is the nabob since the Christmas. Mick Fitzpatrick. Yep. Nice fella is Fitz. Temper though. Fitz and Starts we used to call him years ago. Oh, but don’t you call him that or he’ll rear up on you, Tell him I was asking for him.”
Minogue looked at the papers again. Irene Mullen, the mother.
“We’ll go out and have a quick look first ourselves,” he said. “It’s only ten minutes up the road.”
Kilmartin laid his jacket on a chair.
“Course you have Tonto here to translate for you.”
Minogue closed one eye and squinted at Kilmartin. The Chief Inspector beamed back. Minogue grabbed his notebook, rapped it once on the desk and headed for the car park.
Everything still seemed too bright and too slow. He could almost hear his eyelids closing and opening. He wasn’t hungry but he knew he should make the effort. He made his way around the bus queues along Abbey Street and slipped down the lane toward the back door of the pool hall. Thirty lousy quid for the leather jacket that O’Connell knew cost two hundred in the shops. Bastard. The look that told him he knew it was the lowest price he could throw at him without making him walk off. The camera was a surprise. He’d said forty and gotten thirty. He’d kept the Walkman but the batteries had run out.
It took him a count of seven before he could see anything beyond the lights over the pool tables. All he could make out were the figures moving, the smoke. James Tierney’s closely cropped head appeared in the glare over one table. He leaned in again to cue the shot.
“Howiya, Jammy, how’s it going, man?”
James Tierney dropped the cue with a sigh, closed his eyes and then regrouped to line up the cue again.
“Get lost, Leonardo,” he murmured.
The cue darted, the white knocked the red hard against the mat and into the corner pocket. By the time the red clicked amongst the other balls in the pocket, the white was still.
“Ace, Jammy! Brilliant, man! Fucking ace!”
Jammy Tierney stood up out of the light. Another man stepped forward. The balls on the table were mirrored in his glasses. Tierney stared at the table and chalked his tip.
“I’m in a game,” he said.
“Sorry, Jammy. Sorry, man. I just thought I’d, you know…”
“Take a fucking walk.”.
“Yeah, right. It’s okay! Sorry. I’ll wait outside like, you know. No problem.”
For the next twenty minutes he walked from the front door of the pool hall down the lane to the back. He thought often of sneaking back in and watching somewhere he wouldn’t be noticed. He imagined the perfect shot, the ball dropping into the pocket, the money changing hands. If he was Jammy Tierney, he’d be doing better than this dive. He’d be at it night and day until he got to the big time. He stopped by the back door again. What if Jammy was giving him the brush-off and was going to leave by the front? He took a step up toward the open door but stopped when he remembered Jammy’s face. He jogged to the front of the building in time to see the guy with the glasses leaving.
The gloom of the pool-room seemed to have deepened. Tierney was setting up the balls. A skinny, hippy type was chalking his cue.
“Hey, how did you do, Jammy?”
Tierney jerked his head up.
“What are you doing back here? I thought I told you to get lost, didn’t I?”
“I heard you, Jammy. Yeah, and I left. I seen the other fella go, so…”
Tierney took a step back and looked him up and down.
“Even in here I can see how wasted you are. The state of you. You’re sweating.”
“It’s a heat wave, man.”
“Oh yeah? Look in a mirror, Leonardo. You’re a mess.”
“Looks aren’t everything, Jammy, man. Come on, man. I just came by to talk to you for a minute.”
“ ‘Talk to you?’ Sure you’re not sussing out the place to see if you can do some dealing to the kids in here? Because if you are, I’ll burst you.”
“I just wanted to say hello. Is that such a big crime these days?”
“What are you into now, Leonardo? You graduated to the hard stuff?”
“No way!”
“Here, let me see your arms. Yeah, you’re wearing a jacket and it’s like the Sahara this last ten days here. C’mere!”
He pushed Tierney’s hand away.
“Don’t start with me, Jammy.”
Tierney laughed.
“Or what? What’ll you do, Leonardo? Faint on me?”
“All I wanted was to say hello and that.”
He looked back into Tierney’s face and took in his scorn. They were the same age. They had been friends since the first day they had started primary school together.
“Did you get a job?”
“I do a bit of this and that. They’re going to cut down me rock-and-roll. They found out I was living at home, you know?”
“And you’ve given up completely on the drawings and stuff, right?”
“No way! Well, not exactly. I go out some days with me stuff.”
“I never see you out there. I haven’t seen you for months. Anywhere.”
“Well, I’m trying to stake out new places, amn’t I? I don’t like to just do the one spot all the time, you know. That’s not how the art business works, Jammy.”
“The art business. That’s what you’re calling chalk drawings on the frigging footpath, is it?”
Tierney folded his arms. The tattoo of the snake and the guitar swelled out from his upper arm.
“It’s the summer, man. There are millions of chalkies out there. Jesus! Foreigners even. Every street-corner. What am I supposed to do, have a barney right there in the street with every single one of them so’s I can have a good spot to show me stuff?”
“Let me guess. You want me to stand there with you and collect money for you.”
“I can look after myself, so I can.”
“What, then? You came by to talk about the bleeding weather?”
“I want to get on with someone, Jammy. You know.”
The shadows dug deeper into Tierney’s forehead.
“What,” he said.
“You know. Get something going. A future. Show what I can do.”
Tierney continued to stare at him but his eyes had slipped out of focus.
“The Egans? You are a header. ‘The Egans’ he says. Like he really means it.”
“Don’t give me that look, Jammy. Come on! I done stuff!”
“Crack, you mean. Speed.”
“You’re not even giving me a chance, man.”
“Chance at what? Here, let me tell you something. Nothing personal now.”
He leaned in close to whisper.
“You’re a total waster. Okay? You’re out of your box.”
“All I’m saying is maybe you can put me in touch with people.”
“‘People’?”
“Everyone knows you’re clean, Jammy. They respect that, man. But the lads in here: you know them, they know you. Fellas come through here every day of the week. Some of them are in the line of what I’m talking about.”
“Listen, man. Get this through your head: I’m clean. Like I always been. Like you used to slag me about. I play an odd game here and that’s it.”
“Don’t get me wrong, man! I’m not asking you to get in on something you wouldn’t want to. Really, Jammy! I swear. All I’m saying is maybe you could put in a word for me. Only me, like. Not you. I’ve been thinking, right? I want to settle down, don’t I. Get a start and do things right. You know, move in with someone.”
“Who’s the lucky someone?”
“Mary, maybe.”
The scorn left Tierney’s face.
“Mary? Mary Mullen?”
“Well, yeah. Maybe you wouldn’t understand.”
Tierney blinked and looked away to the end of the hall.
“Come on, Jammy! You could get me in the door at least.”
“I don’t work for the Egans. I mind me own business. So should you. Fucking iijit.”
“It’s not just them, Jammy! You know people. People coming through here, like.”
“Get the message, man.”
“I’m good at stuff, Jammy! I am!”
Tierney’s eyes bored into his now.
“What the hell are you so good at that the likes of the Egans would want you for? ‘Pavement Artist: Leonardo Hickey. Specialising in chalk, and getting high.’ ”
“I can do cars steady, Jammy. I’m good at it. Regular fence. I do a bit every night now.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant, man,” said Tierney. “Just ace. Oh, yeah. Christ. I’m out of here.”
He walked alongside Tierney.
“And I can drive. Aw, man, you know I can do that.” Tierney didn’t slow his pace.
“You’re about ten years too old to be still joyriding. Get smart, Leonardo. Fuck’s sake.”
He rapped Tierney’s shoulder as they stepped out onto the footpath. Tierney whirled around, his face twisted in anger.
“Don’t do that, man! Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Sorry. It’s just that… you know.”
“It’s not like it was! Never!”
“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”
“You never listened to me, did you? Ever. I told you to stay away from that stuff. To look out for yourself, you know. And now look… Jesus, you were the best soccer player all the way through school. You could have-”
“I still can, Jammy! You should see me, man!”
Tierney’s eyes rested on the far end of the street now.
“Yeah, right, man. Sure. But you’re running in the wrong direction.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? It’s easy to judge people, isn’t it? Oh, yeah. So easy.” Tierney turned to him.
“Look, Leonardo. I don’t know if you really listen to anyone. Get this through your head: Nobody trusts a junkie.”
“I’m not a fucking junkie, Jammy. Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, yeah? You could quit cold turkey any time, right? Sure, man. Prove it. Sort yourself out and maybe someone might take you seriously.”
“They take Mary seriously and you know what she does-”
Tierney suddenly jabbed him hard in the chest.
“Shut up, man! I can just about put up with you lying about yourself but-”
“I was only saying that she gets to do-”
Tierney grasped his collar and twisted it.
“I don’t want to hear it, you lying bastard.”
Tierney shoved him away.
“I can do it, Jammy. Whatever it is. Swear to God.”
Tierney looked into the startled eyes again.
“What the hell are you talking about? Do what?”
“Whatever it takes, Jammy. I’m good! I’ve done stuff. Tell them, okay? Will you?”