Wonderland: An Inspector Matt Minogue Mystery (The Matt Minogue Series Book 7)

by John Brady

  Two Birds, One Stone

  Wild Borneo

  Mutiny

  Waiting

  Is There Anything You’d Like To Add To That?

  In The Blink Of An Eye

  She’s Not A Crime Wave

  What Shapes She Had Seen

  A Spot Of Bother

  Unbelievable

  Mighty Quinn

  Get On Board

  From What We Saw

  Priorities

  An Eye-Opener

  Save Changes?

  There’s No Chance . . .?

  Reynardine

  Duke Of Yorks, Idaho Reds

  Should Have Known

  Que Sera Sera, And All That

  Cards On The Table, You Contrary Hoor

  No Big Thing

  A Folley-Up

  Just Forget You Ever Heard About It

  Hell To Pay

  Was There Something Else?

  A Cushy Number, Is It?

  Eight Hundred Years And More

  Diversions Commence

  Céad Mile Fáilte

  It’ll Be Like Old Times For You

  Push Comes To Shove

  Niamh

  Foremost In Our Minds

  Back To Civilization

  Salvage

  A Wee Chat

  Do What You Have To Do

  A Fella

  A Rat, Surely

  The Bohemian Ambassador

  Business As Usual

  A Bit Of Chaos

  Mood Changes, That Sort Of Thing?

  It’s About Trust

  Refuge

  How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?

  Give Bray A Chance

  Another Day

  Fluffy

  I’ll Take Care Of It

  You’re Lost. Aren’t You?

  No Hard Feelings

  So It’s Nobody’s Fault, See?

  Credit Cards On The Brain

  A Real Work Of Art

  Picture-In-Picture

  Wonderland

  Leave The Fights In The Ring

  A Little Talking-To About Loyalty

  Gaga

  I Know What I Seen

  Just Let Me See Him

  Welcome To The Real World, Pal

  Why Isn’t This About Niamh

  DEDICATION

  COPYRIGHT

  ALSO BY JOHN BRADY

  Two Birds, One Stone

  There wasn’t much talk when they decided about the Albanians. It was the main order of business; everyone around the table knew it was coming. Gallagher stuck to what he’d started with, which was to take care of it out in the street. Liam Grogan wasn’t surprised really.

  The Albanians had shown up in March, on the asylum run from France. Their papers said they were from someplace you couldn’t pronounce in Yugoslavia, or, as Gallagher liked to say, the former Yugoslavia. Nobody really knew. Everything over there was forged or robbed. The fact was that these two were putting stuff out on the street for months now. There was talk too of them trying to get girls in from Bulgaria or Russia. Trying their hand at everything, according to Gallagher; mooching about.

  Grogan shifted in his seat and gave up trying to mentally place Albania on a map of Europe. He eyed Gallagher’s mop of white hair. The Professor he was called inside, right, with the Einstein do and all. It always looked so peculiar over his black beard. Well, he did take himself a bit seriously. But he’d always been that way in the however many years he’d been Warrant Officer for the West Belfast brigade too. Thanks to Her Majesty, he had two degrees from the Open University under his belt.

  “Anything else from the Guards,” Gallagher said. “Specifically, in relation to the Russian thing, or where did they get their heroin from.”

  “Nope,” said Kelly. “Nothing new.”

  Grogan watched Gallagher’s fingers move around the rim of his glass. Arms on him the size of another man’s legs. His rig was one of those you saw on the wheelchair athlete races. But for all the free sociology lessons, Gallagher was a savage.

  “Liam?”

  Grogan had to make an effort to take his eyes off Gallagher’s hands.

  “We’re game ball with your Dublin friend?”

  Grogan felt the other eyes settle on him now.

  “Ready, willing, and able?” Gallagher asked.

  “No bother,” Grogan said. “He’s sound.”

  “Since when?”

  “Well, I was talking to him last night.”

  Gallagher kept his gaze on him.

  “Even with the additional item?”

  “He’s okay with it. He understands the need for it.”

  “He’s not entirely happy with it though, is he.”

  “He’ll do his bit. The follow-up and everything.”

  Gallagher sat back and he rested his hands on the table. Grogan wondered if this would be enough to finally convince them about Bobby Quinn. Maybe then, Gallagher would cut the sarcasm and finally call “your friend in Dublin” by his proper name.

  They went around the table. When his turn came, Grogan nodded. He didn’t feel badly about it, he realized. He didn’t feel anything at all really.

  He lit another cigarette and he listened to Frank Nevins begin to explain to the meeting how the laboratory effort was going. Nevins had done a lot of reading about chemicals and equipment. He loved talking about the technical stuff, the gear. Bore the arse off you.

  Grogan didn’t try very hard to stop his mind wandering. Additional item. In his mind he heard again Gallagher hit the t hard when he said it. A-dish-nil eye-tehm. Was it because they were from Dublin that Gallagher could talk like that?

  He’d heard it all over the years, about the crowd down South, the crowd in Dublin. He’d heard it from the men who now sat around this table, he’d heard it from the others who were dead now, he’d even heard it from his own family. Oh, a different mob down South, so they are. You can’t trust them, even the politicals. Not a one of them can you trust. They’d turn on you without warning.

  No. It was probably because Quinn himself hadn’t even been aware of how bad it had gotten. Their insider in the Guards had tipped them off. It was Grogan who had to drive down and tell Quinn. That was just one more thing for Gallagher, of course, one more excuse to be the way he was.

  The “item” was all over the place, trying to start up his own jobs. Wouldn’t listen to anyone. He’d even tried to talk Quinn into letting him try to bend some of the Drug Squad cops. Quinn had found out a fortnight ago that he was selling drugs, or trying to sell them, in clubs and out in the suburbs. The story was that the drugs were coming from the Albanians, too. Right under Quinn’s nose, type of thing.

  Nevins went off into something about a chemical formula.

  Last month, Gallagher had asked him about Quinn again. Was he on the ball. Was he really aware of the situation down there. Had he still got contacts. Did he have the brains for this. Finally, after the digs about incompetence, was Quinn above board.

  It was almost an exact replay of Gallagher trying to sound him out about Quinn after the first meeting in Newry last year.

  What bothered Gallagher about Bobby Quinn back then was his lack of blather. Quinn wasn’t a yapper, especially in that Dublin way. It was only poor choice of associates got him the five years. In the eighteen months he and Grogan had in Portlaoise, he couldn’t remember Quinn losing it, or being stupid, or complaining.

  “Not much to say for himself, has he,” was Gallagher’s take then.

  “Not such a bad thing, is it.”
>
  “What, a fella from Dublin who doesn’t talk his head off?”

  “Well, how many have you known?”

  It was true, and Gallagher knew it. They were very parochial here. They were paranoid actually, if you wanted to be frank about it. How else would you be after thirty years of this? The people in the South were just like anyone else these days. They went shopping, they went to Disney World, they put in new kitchens and all the rest of it. Sure, it was only a hundred miles to Dublin. It might as well be a thousand.

  The money to be made had nothing to do with the border, or the Brits, or what you did for Ireland’s freedom, or even what happened a year, or a week ago. What it was about was waking up, and realizing that you didn’t go through thirty years of war here just to sit on the sidelines while a pack of jackals landed here and started taking things from under your nose. Someone needed to get the message in right short order.

  Nevins finished up with something to do with volatility and disposal, how he’d found a good way. It went to Kelly then. He made a joke about mice eating the stuff and going wild. Then he started in on what had gotten done in Velsen, the place they’d been recommended near Amsterdam, and the new shipping agent.

  Grogan stretched out one leg and then the other. The ache had turned into pain now. The cortisone had been Tuesday. His hip was taking too much weight; he just had to get up. No one paid attention to his slow patrol around the room.

  His turn came sooner than he expected. He told them about the Dublin trade and the routes to Galway and up to Sligo. Kelly tried more wit but it didn’t take this time either, something to do with the time he asked the fella in Sligo with no kneecaps if he wanted to buy painkillers.

  Grogan said he hadn’t thought of that. Having a dealer kneecapped over a late payment wouldn’t have been his first choice. Kelly didn’t like being deadpanned.

  “We’ll see how these Albanian fellas take to it then,” he said. Nobody laughed.

  And that was it. Kelly reminded them that his daughter would be on the telly tonight. They’d interviewed her on account of she was the head of the residents’ association on the estate. It was a thing about Orange marching routes and would the riots last year be repeated again this year.

  “Well, at least we know we can depend on somebody,” Kelly said.

  Grogan almost felt sorry for some of the Orangemen, the ancient ones anyway, with their bowler hats and their union jacks. Frozen in time, they were, and the smart ones knew it. Their gangs he’d have no trouble with. That hadn’t changed: one in the back of the head for every man jack of them. One dozen, if that’s what it took.

  He let himself down into a chair again. Gallagher wheeled over.

  “Well, Liam. Getting any easier?”

  “Wait and see,” says the surgeon.

  “They always say that, don’t they.”

  Gallagher rolled his wheels back and forward. Kelly was still holding the door.

  “No second thoughts from Mr. Quinn?”

  Grogan had known it was coming. Still he replied a little quicker than he liked to hear from himself.

  “No. Like I was saying, he’s on board.”

  “We’re doing his housecleaning for him too. He understands that, doesn’t he.”

  Grogan nodded. Kelly let the door close, and he made his way over.

  “Our fella’s there already,” Gallagher said. “He went down this morning.”

  “It might take time to do it right.”

  “They have to sign in at some office there before the end of the week?”

  “The Alien’s Office.”

  “He’ll be quick when the time comes,” Kelly said.

  Roe, Johnnie Roe, Grogan thought. He’d never actually met him. The fact was that Roe was a header, a header in more ways than one. It was some disease or condition. He’d heard someone give it a name once, a word that sounded like one of those mountain goats in South America they got wool from. A stress thing from prison, maybe. Roe had been working steady on contract since he got out. Gallagher let slip one night that he figured Roe had done a dozen or so jobs in the past three years. You could tell from the descriptions in the papers anyway.

  Grogan planted his stick in the carpet, and shifted to his right. Kelly bent to him.

  “Are you okay there, Liam.”

  He wanted to yank Kelly’s hand from under his arm, throw him across the room.

  “Grand.”

  They weren’t a year apart, Kelly and himself. They’d been amongst the first out in 1971, the time they’d gotten the American guns into the Ardoyne. The joke for years had been how Kelly’s mother had beaten the ears off him that night when she’d found out. It was Kelly’s luck not to have been in that car nine years ago when it was riddled at a checkpoint. Kelly’s younger brother Jude had twenty-seven bullets in him.

  Grogan followed Gallagher’s wheels to the door.

  He’d need to use a second stick in the not too distant future. But he’d always have Kelly’s pity, wouldn’t he.

  Gallagher turned and looked up.

  “Mind yourself, Liam.”

  Wild Borneo

  Eileen Magee wasn’t one for waiting, especially when she could see the traffic stopped ahead on the Goatstown Road. She made her way to the front of the bus and rearranged her shopping bags on her hands. It was good to be out of town before eleven. The traffic—Holy God!

  “I’ll race you, missus.”

  She looked over at the driver. The bags slid down and pinched her fingers.

  “My racing days are over, let me tell you.”

  He stretched and pretended to laugh and then he opened the door.

  “Mind yourself crossing.”

  The traffic was stopped in both directions now. She heard car horns in the distance, a pneumatic drill. She stepped into the park and headed down the long, curving tarmacadam path that followed the river Dodder upstream toward Milltown. The grass was spotted with daisies. She wondered if kids made daisy chains anymore.

  Just to be alive, she almost said aloud, even to be sixty-three years old. How lucky she was, how very lucky. She had her place bought and paid for, long before the property madness had hit Dublin. Tonight was bridge. There’d be Maddie Rowan and her husband, Tom, with the laugh like a horse. Saturday they’d drive up the mountains.

  Maybe the nicest thing about Dublin—if you weren’t worried about getting mugged or that class of thing—was that the city was teeming with young people. She liked that, even the madness down Henry Street. Still, she found herself wondering where her own places had gone over the years, her landmarks, her own Dublin.

  A scent of lilac came to her. She stopped and moved one of her bags to her other hand. She looked across to the garden walls backing onto the park. A lot of the houses there on Whitebeam Road had had their attics converted. It wasn’t for having bigger families though, was it. She rarely saw kids around here. They were in care, she supposed, what with the both parents having careers these days.

  The grass gave way to shrubs and trees as the park narrowed, and the path drew closer to the riverbank. She knew she’d never get used to the overgrown look to the parks now. There was a plan behind it, she’d learned, the way they wanted to naturalize the park. It was the new way, ecology.

  Eileen wouldn’t walk down here at night. Years ago, the kids from the flats in Donnybrook would give you pause, but those gurriers flinging rocks into the river or fishing for pinkeens were long gone. She sort of missed them.

  Well, maybe not all of them were gone. Here were two kids, two boys, half-walking and swinging their sticks across the grass. A little wave of gladness for lost times came over her. They must be from an old style family, she decided. It was the way it should be, if truth be told, even nowadays. Kids should be playing and wandering, carefree, with a mammy waiting at home for them.

  “A great day for exploring, lads, isn’t it?”

  One of them, he couldn’t be more than nine or ten, stopped swinging and looked at her.
She felt her smile slip. Did no one talk to kids, bid them good day anymore?

  The other continued his swinging. He lopped a dandelion and he examined the tip of his stick. She liked the grass-stained knees, the unruly hair, the freckles.

  “It’s like wild Borneo, isn’t it?”

  One glanced at her, looked away. Maybe they hadn’t done that in geography.

  “On an adventure, are you?”

  The tall boy sort of nodded and he began to walk away. The whir of his stick on the grass reminded her of something. She smiled at the younger one. He had curly hair. His socks balled at this ankles, and his shoes were caked with mud. He looked at her.

  “There’s a girl,” he said.

  She smiled, waited. He wanted her to say something, though.

  “A girl, is there?”

  The taller boy had turned now. He eyed Eileen.

  “Sleeping,” said the curly one.

  Eileen studied the face. God knows all the warnings they must get about strangers these days anyway.

  “Eoin,” said the tall one. “Come on.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Sleeping, so she is.”

  She watched him trudge after his pal. He looked back at her once.

  She turned toward the shrubs and the trees beyond. The river was shallow down there, she remembered. She couldn’t hear it.

  Someone gave a long beep in the traffic jam back out on the Goatstown Road. She sighed and she headed up the path toward Milltown.

  The shopping bags had slid from her palm down her fingers again. She slowed near the shrubs and listened. A couple courting in the bushes on a summer’s day wasn’t news, was it. Maybe the girl pretended she was asleep. The fella might’ve been quick enough to make himself scarce when the two explorers showed up. As fellas will do.

  The hush of the traffic still hung over the park, but now she could hear the low mutter of the river. She looked in through the leaves. Wild Borneo, was right. A jungle. She sighed, and she thought of Sister Brophy, that battle-axe from Leitrim, running the wards all those years ago. Those expressions barked out used to drive them up the walls, but they’d lodged, as Brophy had of course intended, and they’d stayed.

  Things are not what they may seem, nurse. Examine. Ask. Report.

  And how could she not remember the other great Brophyism, the same one that hundreds, thousands would know?