Stepaside Garda Station was in the centre of the village. Keating met Minogue in the adjoining carpark. Keating was whistling, tongue behind his teeth. Curly head, mother's love, Minogue mused. He guessed that Keating might be the youngest in his family. Keating winked.
"You found the place all right, did you?"
"Course I did, Pat. I'm a detective. Now who are these Mulvaneys?" asked Minogue.
"They're a bit like hillbillies so far as I can tell from the lads in the station, sir. We have sheets on them for car theft, B amp; E, petty larceny. Three brothers and they live on their own up above Barnacullia. Up there," Keating nodded toward the rounded top of Two Rock Mountain over the hedges.
"Barman at Glencullen said that they had words with Mr Combs one night recently."
"Glencullen? You mean Johnny Fox's pub? But didn't Combs live in Kilternan? Why would he be going up there for his gargle?"
"Don't know, sir. Maybe he didn't like the one around the corner from him. The Golden Ball. Can't say I blame him either."
"Aha," Minogue murmured.
"And the barman says the Mulvaneys were in the pub with their usual carryings on. Mr Combs used to go in early in the evening for a brandy and a chaser. He'd be in about half seven and gone by nine o'clock, he says. Now one or another of the brothers Mulvaney had words with Combs. They were langers drunk. Drinking all day, by the cut of them," Keating said and paused to rub his eye.
"I think the barman is a bit leery of the likes of the Mulvaneys, sir," he added. "Now he has a chance to get a dig at them without having to face them. There's a lot of people up in these parts are not the full shilling, I believe."
"What was the row about anyway, did you hear?"
"Something about Combs' accent. 'Why is there an effin' Brit bein' served in this effin' pub with all the boys fightin' for freedom not a hundred miles up the effin' road?' and the rest of it," Keating replied.
"Barstool heroes. When they're not falling off them," Minogue muttered darkly. Three Gardai in shirtsleeves came out the back door of the police station. They carried batons.
"Come along up with us lads, the view is only tremendous," quipped a balding Garda. Minogue recognised him from somewhere. The Garda football club? A Cork accent, as thick as a ditch, and a clown's loaded smile. Another Cork exile here in Dublin.
Keating drove. The car made heavy work of the steep, winding road to Barnacullia.
"The official line is that we'll be requesting their assistance on several break-ins around the area. That way if they mention Combs at all, they'll be coming to him cold and we'll know what's what very quickly."
"Any assaults or threats on their records?" Minogue asked.
"Not yet, can I say, sir. Only resisting arrest, one of them. It's a bit thin, I know, but sure we can only try, can't we?"
Minogue nodded.
"They'll be dragging their arses out of bed around now. Says the sergeant below, anyway. Oh, the three brothers have names, too. Do you want to hear them?"
"Go on out of that. Are they special?" asked Minogue.
"The oldest one is called the Bronc. He wears a cowboy hat. The middle one is Seamus, but if you call him that, he'll pick a row with you. Everyone calls him Shag. Shag Mulvaney."
"Has a nice ring to it. And the third lad?"
"He's called Quick."
"Isn't that rich?"
"Quick has a bad leg now, so he's more law-abiding than the other two. He was the scourge of south County Dublin a few years ago. A real careful burglar, you know the worst kind, the ones who do it off a list, shopping for stuff they can fence straight away. We could never pin one on him. He could walk up a wall and do houses while people were fast asleep in the next room. He got a bit cocky, though, and started to take a few jars before a job. One night himself and another lad were half-way in the window of a house and didn't the man of the house hear them. 'Quick,' says Mulvaney and…"
"And what?"
"And that was all he said. Fell thirty feet into a bloody glasshouse, all over someone's rare tropical plants, and he didn't get up either. He has one leg longer than the other one since, and the long one is stuck together with a big bolt or something at the knee."
"A pin, you mean."
"A big fat pin. One of the lads at the station saw it."
Keating had turned onto a narrow road which meandered erratically under Two Rock Mountain. He guided the car cautiously through blind elbow bends. Minogue heard roadside grass lash along the door-panels. The glimpses of view between the bushes and banks to the right side revealed the city and south suburbs below. The sea-horizon was above Howth, they were that high. The Garda squad-car was waiting for them at the foot of a steep path, which led further up the side of the mountain.
"Jases," Keating said to himself, he thought. "We'll be needing mules next."
Rusting hulks of cars surrounded a cottage which crouched by the path. The path itself was no more than the dual tracks that cars had left in their wake. Other mysterious pieces of vehicles lay at the sides of it: bits of tractors, a piece of tread from a caterpillar, the frame of a lorry.
A district detective whom Minogue didn't recognize was leaning his elbows on the roof of the Garda car ahead. He came over and introduced himself as Eamonn Driscoll.
Then, like potatoes tumbling out of a sack which had fallen over, the three Gardai emerged from their car. There was much tucking in of shirts, fingering of batons and scratching of noses. They left their hats in the car.
"Do you want in on this, Sergeant?" sotto voce from the Corkman.
Playing it up a bit, Minogue considered. Maybe he thought it was all terribly funny to have to pick up the Mulvaneys for these detectives out from Dublin. Did he already know what Minogue had suspected, that the Mulvaneys weren't in a class to kill someone? Minogue said he'd come along.
"I hear these lads hunted with Finn McCool," Minogue said to the Corkman.
"Wisha Sergeant," he whispered. "Not to be disappointing you now, but these three Mulvaneys have been trading on their reputations a long time now. There's nothing to them. Petty thieves. Whoever tipped you off to these lads wasn't Charlie Chan. But we'll try anyhow."
Minogue followed the Gardai up the path. Driscoll fell back from the group and introduced himself to Minogue. At the top of the path, Minogue chose a deceased '57 or '58 Ford Prefect to lean his weight on. A dog began barking as the Gardai and Driscoll approached the house. Curious at first, the dog settled into a staccato, monotonous yelping. It didn't sound like a chained dog to Minogue. Then he caught sight of it, an old collie sitting surrealistically in a path of lettuce plants. If the collie was all they had to contend with, then the three brothers could take all their attention.
Driscoll's knock on the door went unanswered. No faces appeared at the windows. The cottage had small windows with sashes that hadn't been painted for a long time. Several panes had been repaired with tape and patches of what had been clear plastic. Minogue heard rustling by a sagging shed, which lay to the rear of the house. The old collie kept up its rhythmic barking. Minogue tried to listen again. Was it a small engine, a power tool of some sort? The shed door opened slightly as though a breeze had caught it. A large Alsatian shot out the gap in the door. The dog hesitated on its hind legs for an instant, caught sight of the group by the front door and began to race toward the policemen.
Its path brought it by Minogue. As the dog hared past him, Minogue stepped out from behind the car and landed a sharp kick on the fleeting dog's backside. It was enough to throw the animal off-course with a yelp. Two of the Gardai turned at the sound.
The dog had spun with the kick, righted itself and turned to face Minogue. Having nothing to hand, Minogue summoned up saliva and spat at the growling dog. The Alsatian's tail wavered. Minogue bared his teeth and crouched slightly, his arms out. He made to spit again, but the dog had already backed into the weeds.
"Hey, look it!" Minogue heard one of the Gardai shout.
A gnomic head peeped out of the shed door.
"Ya dirty animal," the head called out.
The Alsatian backed away further from Minogue then loped back to the shed. Driscoll ran up to Minogue, looked at him and then called out.
"Quick, come outa there where we can see you. Tie up that dog of yours or I'll do for it. Do you hear me talking to you?"
The dog wriggled through the door opening and disappeared. The old collie was still barking, as though having remembered how to do it, he was loath to surrender the skill to forgetfulness. A short, barrel-chested man came out of the shed door and closed it noisily behind him. He walked sideways to the policemen, dragging a stiff leg.
"Get those two brothers of yours up, Quick," Driscoll said.
"Dirty animal," Quick hissed.
Minogue watched the sideways gait of the balding man, a face on him that looked like it had been caught in a door.
"Jases, disgusting so it is. Spitting at an animal. I never seen such a disgrace as that," Quick said.
"I suppose he slipped the leash by accident all of a sudden," Driscoll said.
"Can 1 help it if the smell of yous rozzers drives the dog wild?" Quick retorted.
Minogue studied Quick's uneven face. Quick's beard served to emphasize his resentment at the world. He wondered if such spite could lead him to strangling an old man.
"Show us your search warrant," Quick sneered.
"Get up the yard with yourself, Quick," Driscoll broke in. "You're not watching the telly now. Let's have your driving license and your insurance, too. Then you can start showing us all the jalopies you have around here and where you got them."
Quick's expression didn't change. He sidled crookedly by Minogue, looking him up and down at the sea off Dublin. Kilternan was hidden behind a rise of woods below and to the south of where he stood. He recalled the Cork Garda's remarks about the brothers. A household of three drunken bachelors, their forte would be squalid misdemeanours or, at the apogee of a binge, a brawl.
Minogue checked the time. He did not want to wait around long enough to be disappointed. He asked Hoey what time to hold the confab back at headquarters. Hoey said that four o'clock in the briefing room would be manageable from his point of view. Minogue could be in the city by one, his dinner eaten by half one… ready for business by two… and a break in Bewley's Cafe after three. To gather his thoughts, of course.
A breeze searched his jacket. Motive, he thought: why is this old man dead? Simple bloody question, no answer. He thought again of the drawings in Combs' house. Tully church, the pagan symbols on warm, smooth stones…
Quick's limp had soured his face into that of a malignant dwarf. The Bronc was hatless, also wore a beard and smelled like a damp ashtray. He seemed mild, almost co-operative, as he stepped out in his socks onto the flagstones by the door. Evenings, and perhaps mornings too, had left him with an overhanging belly which his vest could not get under. There'd be no competition among the policemen as to who could sit beside The Bronc.
"Yous have nothing on me. Not a fuckin' sausage!" the Bronc hissed.
Minogue watched them trek down the path. Shag was the last of the brothers into the Garda cars. His eyes were darting about, but he remained silent.
"That was easy enough," Keating murmured.
"They were flattered by so much attention, I'm thinking," said Minogue. "Here, I'm off to town directly we get back to the station. Is someone going to go over the place for rope here?"
Keating concealed his surprise.
"Em… Driscoll and another fella will do it while these three divine persons are down in the station."
"Phone me in the unlikely event that…" Minogue didn't finish the sentence. "And can you be in by four along with the others? We'll go over what we have." spacebarthing
Alistair Murray wrote the cable message in longhand, authorized it himself and had it delivered by hand to the Communications Section. Ball would be waiting for official word that MI5 had inherited Combs. Information was to follow in due course, Murray had written in officialese, as to what dispositions and assistance Foreign Office staff could make for Mr Kenyon should the Security Service request same.
Murray omitted the second letter of his initials in the "reply to" box. The omission was a signal to Ball to telephone him at a public telephone booth in Knights-bridge at one o'clock this afternoon. He settled back in his chair and stifled a yawn. Maybe he should have let Combs off the hook sooner, he reflected. But getting him out of Dublin would not have been risk-free either. A cantankerous Combs would have nourished his resentment and had it flower sooner or later, at a time when he, Murray, would have less control. Kenyon and the Security Service would nose about until he had exhausted his irritation and assured himself and the Service that Combs could be boxed and buried permanently. Combs, whether he had liked it or not, had earned his keep. Under the circumstances… Murray's thoughts slid away.
His memory drew him back yet again to the drizzly expanse of aerodrome tarmac, the blanket of grey clouds low over the small groups in uniform huddled under umbrellas. He remembered the savage ironies; here he was, standing in the rain at an RAF base where England's finest hours had been played out in the war, with fliers limping back to base in that spring of 1940. Heroes' return… and so many never returning; England's best.
A clear enemy then, ranting dictators and masses of goose-stepping fanatics. England had never been more united. Who was the enemy now? he remembered wondering as he had looked out through the rain at the regimental honour guard, the drizzle beading and dripping from their brims while they waited for the coffins to emerge from the plane. No Members of Parliament to welcome back these soldiers, to stand vigil and honour their dead. No Ministers or their Secretaries. No Kenyons either. Just the faint hum from the motorway in the distance, the families standing in puddles, the uniforms. Small sprays of lilies standing out against the greys. No, no hero's return, no medals pinned, no wife's embrace. He had watched from the car as Ball had walked behind his brother's coffin, hatless and pale. Who was the enemy now?
Murray had waited for several weeks before contacting Ball. He had to wait for it to sink in with Mervyn Ball as it had sunk in with himself three years before. He waited for Ball to understand that his brother's funeral marked the end of it. There would be no public outrage, no questions in the Commons. Just another British officer's death sinking into history-not even history, mere numbers. And all for what? The sniper still crept over the rooftops of West Belfast, claiming more victims, the bombers still thumbed the buttons. A holding operation, governments too wary and timid to ask the army to do better than watch as parts of soldiers were shovelled into plastic bags amid the rubble.
Months later, Ball at a Foreign Office reception, glass in hand, weighing Murray up as the party went on around them: Yes, Mervyn, we have something in common. Your brother was in the Royal Greenjackets, I think _
While Minogue negotiated his way into the centre of Dublin, Kenyon was walking back to his office in Cadogan Gardens! Kenyon was finding it difficult to order things in his mind. Several times during his walk he resolved to wait until he reached his office before trying to run over the facts again.
He was dimly aware of a threat lurking somewhere. It was contiguous with, but also hidden by his own anger and alarm. Back in his office, Kenyon listed plusses and minuses on a sheet of paper. Then he sat back in the chair and waited for the issues to announce themselves.
The first thing Hugh Robertson, the Director of his section, would ask him would be if he was being as objective as he could be. No, maybe he'd ask if Kenyon wasn't overly sensitive in the atmosphere of publicity around the Service's operations. As for the objectivity question, Kenyon had to point out that there was too big a gap between what Murray was saying and what he himself was beginning to conclude about Arthur Combs. The Combs that Kenyon had read was still a younger man, rebellious and steely. Evaluation, objective evaluation, Kenyon echoed as he sat back in his chair.
He unlocked his desk and removed a sheet from the top drawer. The sheet contained a list of names. Seven of the fifteen people whose names he had gleaned from Combs' file in the Registry were dead. Of the remaining eight only two were British. One of those two lived in Spain. None of these people was under seventy. As far as Kenyon knew, none on the list had any connections with security or intelligence organisations. Combs had been fluent in German, of course. Probably bits of Greek and Spanish, definitely French. So? Kenyon almost said aloud.
Another possibility was local to where he had lived, near Dublin. Unlikely, he whispered aloud. Combs had resisted going there in the first place. Garrulous people, "the world's best grudge-keepers" had been quoted directly from an interview with Combs. Funny, but macabre now.
Kenyon buzzed Bowers and sent him out for two cheese croissants. Then he stood by the window, not needing the paper or lists to command the issues now. Just before Bowers' return, Kenyon was brooding about the perennial injustice of other people's chickens coming home to roost with him. Injustice indeed: Combs would have known about that. Kenyon swore aloud at the impossible logistics he'd have to outline if he was going to go through with this operation.
All at once Kenyon realised that if he was already thinking details, it meant that he had made a decision. He had assented to a plan, but he hadn't quite admitted it to himself yet. He'd stick with that decision. This insight provided a moment of relief, but when Bowers knocked, Kenyon was again worrying about an important detail he might have missed. Christ, there had to be someone significant in Combs' life. His family was gone years ago; there had to be someone he'd trust.
"Sir."
Bowers pushed the door open. Kenyon turned and glanced at the doctorate in political science who was five months into working for the greater good of the United Kingdom. Bowers' glasses reminded Kenyon of Carl Jung. Sex, anyone? No thanks. Bowers/Jung might reply, I must go for a bracing walk in the Alps.
"Good. Still hot? Would you phone the Director's secretary, Gillian, and set up a meeting with him. ASAP. Tell her I can go meet him if he's out, all right?" spacebarthing
Murray taxied to Knightsbridge. The telephone booth next to Mappins was empty. He stepped in and checked for a diartone. Hearing one, he looked at his watch. Two minutes to one. A woman struggling with shopping bags stopped outside the booth and opened her purse for change. Murray stuck his head out the door.
"The phone's broken, I'm afraid. I'm just trying to get my money back out of the stupid thing."
The shopper blinked at the well-groomed man leaning out of the door. She shrugged resignedly and took up her bags again. The phone rang a minute early.
"All right," Murray began. "Five has launched an investigation."
"I understand," said Ball slowly. Murray heard traffic from some Dublin street.
"Hold on a minute," Ball muttered. "I have to plug more money in already…"
Murray listened impatiently as the coins rang into the telephone.
"I had a meeting with Five's man. He thinks our friend may have done something underhand. Wrote a bloody memoir. Left some documents, or told someone. They'll want you for a debriefing, too," said Murray. "And I expect they'll do a sweep of the house, too," he added.
"I'm ninety-nine percent sure the place is clean. There was nothing."
"They'll be thorough," Murray replied. "They're very tender about the border security conference here. Everybody's edgy."
Ball read the rebuke between Murray's words. Couldn't have come at a worse time… was there no better way to fix it? Ball said nothing.
"What exactly did he say to you when he called you on Thursday?" asked Murray.
"He phoned me at the embassy. I met him in a pub that afternoon. He'd been drinking-"
"But did he say how he'd do it?" Murray interrupted. "What did he say he could do? What would he use?"
Ball paused before answering. This was his third time trying to reassure Murray.
"He said he wanted out and that we had better listen to him this time around. I got him calmed down. He didn't say how but that he'd see to it somehow-"
"Somehow," Murray repeated. "Somehow."
"Exactly. He thought we had his mail opened and that we knew when he went to the toilet. He had no real plan, nothing. He went off at half-cock, without thinking it out. He said I should 'walk the plank' for it. You too."
"He didn't know me," Murray said quickly.
"I know. More bluff. He only met you once. He called you'the ringleader.' How do you like that title?"
Murray did not care for Ball's grim humour one bit. There was a taunting edge to it: Ball, the action-man, chiding Murray, the desk-man. Murray thought back to the meeting in a seedy Dublin hotel. Combs had already been into his second-or was it third? — Scotch minutes after the hotel bar had opened, looking sullenly from Ball to Murray, hardly bothering to conceal his hostility.
"But he had no inkling after you met him Thursday? That we wouldn't buy, I mean?"
"Right." Ball said sharply. "I got him calmed down and I gave him what he wanted. I told him it would take a couple of days to get the passport through, so it'd be Monday at the earliest. But that we'd hurry things up…"
"Yes," said Murray, distracted yet.
"… Stroked his hand, cooed his ear about the work he had done. I sent him home happy. At least more sober than when he arrived at the pub. I told him we had been about to wrap the whole thing up soon."
"You're certain he wasn't specific even then?"
"Absolutely. He didn't say what he would do, or would have done. That's because he didn't have anything prepared," Ball added slowly for emphasis.
Except his instincts, Murray almost added aloud. Kenyon's reading of the Combs' material… Would Combs have suspected something from the way Ball had behaved at that meeting, that he'd never be let go knowing what he knew? Was Combs really the boozy, truculent character that Ball had been dealing with, or had Kenyon scented something more basic in his make-up?
"All right," Murray said finally, staying his own wandering. "Expect to be called in about Combs."
Murray hung up and hailed a taxi. He tried to ignore the garrulous Cockney cabbie. Ball was experienced, dependable. His motivation was at least as high as Murray's own. Mervyn Ball had dealt with Combs for two years, babysitting him, humouring him-his had to be the more accurate assessment. Most of all, Ball had not flinched, even when Murray himself had thought it precipitate to silence the old man.
The taxi joined a traffic jam near Oxford Circus. The cabbie's eyes sought out Murray in the mirror.
"Bloody bomb scare, I shouldn't wonder," said the Cockney. "Who's it this time, I wonder? The bloody Arabs or the Irish, eh?"
Murray ignored the question. Combs' "Somehow": it was very telling, all right. A loose threat, stillborn. He wondered if Ball had felt much pity for the old man. Hardly. Ball had been tough from the start. Perhaps not tough-more like firm, uncompromising-but still able to coax the old man. Did Combs wonder how Ball could cave in so readily to his demand last Thursday, though? Combs might have sobered up and then wondered why, after years of the cold shoulder, he was suddenly being granted what he had been asking for at least thirty years…
Murray recalled the black-and-white framed snapshot which he kept in his desk. The confident, boyish face and the haircut they had laughed about. It was 1971, of course, and even Murray himself had grown sideburns. "Passing out at Sandhurst" had been the joke when Ian Murray had his arm around his younger brother's neck in a chokehold, laughing into the camera. Ian the doer, Ian the adventurer. A ham, a litany of broken arms and legs through youth, the ebullient extrovert. The same Ian Murray on a greasy footpath in Belfast three years later, dead before he hit the pavement, the dumdum spraying his brains and teeth twenty feet further down the path.
Did Mervyn Ball have a photo like that, too? One of his own brother, one he looked at before he went to Combs' house that night? Donald Ball had been a Royal Greenjacket, Ian Murray a Para. Ball told him that he had a letter from Donald describing the mountains outside Belfast-"once you're out of bloody Belfast, it's a marvellous country, believe it or not". Three days later, his brother was dismembered by a bomb in a roadside culvert… believe it or not.
The taxi inched forward.
"It's the silly season, in'nit then?" said the cabbie.
Murray took out his wallet and looked at the meter. He handed three pounds to the driver and opened the door himself.
"Ta, mate. Bloody bombers are probably back safe in bloody Ireland by now, sitting in a pub laughing. The bastards."
Murray paused before slamming the door.
"Safe in Ireland?" Murray echoed with a sneer. "No such thing."