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

by John Brady

  “Turn on the engine, there.”

  “What?”

  “There’s air conditioning in this.”

  “What, are you sweating?”

  He waited for Doyle’s eyes to meet his in the mirror.

  “Well, I know you are,” he said.

  He began humming very low.

  “They said ten,” Doyle said. The man ignored him.

  “So is it gone ten or not?”

  “What, your girlfriend robbed your watch? After she walloped you?”

  Doyle turned and looked around the headrest. It was the smile that wasn’t a smile at all that got to him, even more than the mockery he could hear in the accent.

  “You’ll be bleeding walking, if you carry on like that.”

  “Turn the key. There’s a clock on the dashboard.”

  Doyle put on his mime act, and turned the ignition.

  “Look,” he said. “What did I tell you? It’s ten. Game over. Let’s get out of here.”

  “The clock is fast. I’m three minutes to. Give it a wee while yet.”

  “Forget your ‘wee while.’ No way. Ten, it is. Orders is orders.”

  Doyle looked down at the Adidas bag.

  “After all, you have to go off and train for the Olympics and that, don’t you?”

  “Give it two more minutes.”

  “Screw you,” said Doyle. “You’re a tourist here. Me, I’ve got things to do.”

  The man in the back looked down at his mobile again. Doyle turned the vents toward the roof. Then he looked down the street toward the Aliens’ Office. People had been lining up there overnight since last year. He watched the traffic in the mirror.

  The man in the back was watching him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, what are you staring at?”

  “Am I staring?”

  “Yeah, you’re staring.”

  “Well, I was wondering about your tattoo.”

  “Well, go and wonder about something else. What are they to you?”

  “Oh, nothing, I suppose. I was just curious.”

  “You were, were you? You don’t like them or something?”

  “I don’t have an opinion on tattoos.”

  That schoolteacher tone too, Doyle remembered, full of sly sarcasm, for sure.

  “Well, don’t look at it if you don’t like it.”

  “Hard to miss it.”

  “Well, find something else to do, right? Instead of annoying people?”

  “Why did you get it there, on the back of your hand?”

  “None of your business. Look, are you trying to be smart with me?”

  “Smart?”

  “Yeah, smart. It’s what we say here if someone’s looking for trouble.”

  He closed his eyes and laid his head back. The cap moved down his forehead.

  “Like, what exactly is your problem?”

  He opened his eyes again and rubbed them. Doyle thought he heard a faint sigh.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Is there something wrong with you?”

  “Oh no, thank you very much. I’m as right as can be. But now you, you look a bit tense, I would have to say.”

  “So you’re a needler, are you. Well you can go needle yourself now, because I’m going. It’s ten o clock.”

  “Give it a while longer.”

  “No way. Ten’s the limit. The traffic’ll build up and we won’t be able to move.”

  “Well these two have come a long way to meet us. The least we could do is give them a bit more time.”

  “What, they’ve only gone a few miles from where—”

  “From Albania, I’m saying.”

  “Albania? Do you actually think they came all the way here to meet us? To meet you?”

  “Do you know where Albania is? What it is?”

  “Just shut up, will you. We’re going, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Doyle put it in first and turned the wheel. The beeps from the mobile stopped him from taking a gap in the traffic. He let the car roll back to the curb.

  “Well,” the man in the back said. “A taxi. How about that.”

  The phone beeped once as it was powered off. Doyle noticed that the man in the back was wiping it with a cloth too now.

  “Well?”

  “Some refugees, with their taxi.”

  “Tell me what you heard, will you?”

  “All right. They’re on their way, the both of them. They just got out of a taxi, and they’re heading our way.”

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

  It had gone quiet now in the interview room. Minogue could hear his stomach at work. This would be a daylong recovery from the Garda Club last night, then. But if he could hear it, so could they. He shifted a little in his chair. It was little enough to get over, compared to what Tommy Malone had told him in the few minutes’ awkward conversation with him at the side of the road.

  He took a glance at the notes that Detective Garda Fiona Hegarty was writing. He’d made cursory notes himself earlier on but he had soon tired of pretending. It was ten o’clock on the dot. One hour that felt like a day’s work already.

  Fiona Hegarty’s writing was regular and readable and spaced and uniform. She was studying Spanish and Computer Science. Minogue had later heard that her husband, a Garda Sergeant, also a night-course cop, was on track to becoming the youngest Garda Inspector in the history of the force. He thought he had heard her say MBA a few days back, but he didn’t want to ask her about that.

  Her Biro stopped. She stared at where the tip poised over the page. Then she looked up at Jennifer Halloran. A hefty class of a woman. You couldn’t use that word anymore of course.

  It had been a half-hour since the same Jennifer Halloran couldn’t stop herself— or at least Minogue supposed she had no control in the matter—from sliding off her chair onto the floor in some kind of fainting panic, hysterical, breakdown type of thing. She’d ended up on her knees. It was like she’d started praying, after an apparition or something, her forehead resting and shaking gently on the table.

  “I knew I’d end up here,” she’d said. “I knew right from the start. Yes, I did.”

  She had refused attention from a doctor. Fiona Hegarty was for pushing on with the interview, and she’d gotten her way. Minogue wasn’t up to the task of trying to understand why it was he expected women to be good to one another. A lifetime of illusion he’d had then, a bone-headed chivalry thing, or just ignorance? The tight-lipped responses he’d gotten from Fiona Hegarty outside in the hall. This was equality.

  “She’s not pregnant. And no condition that she knows of.”

  “That’s on tape, is it,” he asked her.

  “It is.”

  “It’s not her time or anything?”

  “Do you mean her period?”

  “That’s what I mean, yes.”

  “I don’t know. Ask her.”

  He didn’t. Jennifer Halloran looked okay now. He wondered if he should make a note of that. “Composed” maybe. “Relieved”? Gone limp, would be more like it.

  He wondered where in Spain Jennifer Halloran had gone. Which particular spot would attract a forty-two-year-old bookkeeper living at home with her mother and a Down’s Syndrome brother? Had she met a fella there, a gigolo, and had a fling. Had she imagined never coming back. Had she wondered if or when she’d be caught.

  Right: the subconscious. There was always that, wasn’t there. Immediately he saw Kilmartin’s face curl in disdain: don’t start on that subconscious shite with me.

  Maybe a Catholic thing then, a wish for punishment? Not this day and age?

  Ms. Halloran had hardly anticipated being in this claustrophobic room with three chairs and a table and two other microphones in the ceiling that no one got told about, and a detective laying into her while a middle-aged hung-over detective on trainee assignment in the Garda Fraud Squad watched. Hardly.

  Minogue rubbed at h
is eyes. It’s trying to help sort out Tommy Malone’s damned mess he should be doing. Malone had made up his mind that wouldn’t turn himself in until they’d had a proper chat later on.

  The basics: at one o’clock in the morning, after a skinful of drink with Minogue and Kilmartin and Company, Malone had ended up at a chipper with his girlfriend. In came some low-life who knew him, half-knew him, a gouger. Doyle, he thought his name was. Worse, this Doyle knew about Malone’s brother Terry, and that Terry had O.D.-ed in his cell last week. With as much drink in him as Minogue had had, and the pressure of his new job at Drugs Central, Tommy Malone was never more likely to lose it.

  Minogue had tried seeing the ways around this while he listened to Kathleen’s ideas about an apartment and for Iseult finding teaching work, say, and maybe even moving into an apartment they could get the mortgage for or maybe Iseult moving in and paying a lower rent to them and then maybe Pat might think that they could afford Dublin so that would take some of the pressure off.

  All the while they inched through Ranelagh, jammed at road works no one had told him about, the temperature needle a hair away from red, the heat that some people said couldn’t be global warming crushing his dehydrated brain, itself already a mess of irritation and fragility and remorse. A fine state in which to arrive at the office, the white-haired boy, the trainee headed for a big Europolice job.

  Only an hour ago, too. Minogue eyed the statement that Fiona Hegarty had drawn up. Where could you learn to handwrite like that, was all he could think of. Across the table, Jennifer Halloran, shortly to be the official accused, was examining the ends of her hair. Thirty something thousand pounds over six years. How many Euro was that? Her employer of twenty years had been shocked. He’d tried to get a condition that she not go to prison. Well, that was consideration of a sort.

  “Miss Halloran?”

  Minogue waited for her to look up.

  “Is there anything you’d like to add to that?”

  She found something about the tabletop that seemed to surprise her. Her voice was low when she spoke, and she didn’t look up at him.

  “Only that, like I said, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  Her lower lip began to tremble.

  “And I’d just like to say, well, thanks, I mean thank you. For waiting till I got around the corner and all before, you know, bringing me here. I appreciate that, yes.”

  The arrest, he realized. She’s deranged now, exhausted. She’ll say anything.

  He turned to Fiona Hegarty. She finished writing something, dictated a break on tape, and rose from the chair. He followed her, trying not to look at her. He closed the door slowly and stared at the door handle a moment. Well, at least Malone hadn’t shot this Doyle fella.

  In the Blink of an Eye

  The man in the back hadn’t moved since hanging up. Doyle had to clear his throat to get the words out. There was a shrinking somewhere in his gut, like a vacuum at work in there.

  “Is this it?”

  “It is.”

  “What if they make a run for it, cross the street or something? Or split up?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, they’ll cop on to something, they’re not stupid.”

  Even now there was that slight little curl to the lip, the skins where his eyebrows should be up in an arch. Looking at him like he was a specimen or lower form of life.

  “Have you your bally there.”

  “Me what?”

  “Your balaclava.”

  “I do, I’m ready.”

  “Go down to that laneway there. So’s you can turn in right away afterward.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, you know. I know the plan. I’ll do the driving, okay?”

  Wrestling with the wheel while he hung onto the headrest brought up the BO worse. So that’s what lizard-man was saying with the air conditioning.

  He thought back to when he’d left after meeting Quinn at the pub. It was like floating really. And Bobby had said he’d think it over, the idea of getting Malone in a jam. That yeah, there might be a future to that. He hadn’t just given the idea the eff-off.

  “You’re not going to follow them down to the Alien’s place, are you? In front of those people, the refugee crowd or whatever?”

  “You think they’re refugees, do you.”

  He turned around. His palms were wet now. The man kept staring down the street. He had opened his jacket. Doyle didn’t want to stare but he thought there was some kind of a strap up next to his collar now.

  “Can you answer a simple question without being a sarcastic gobshite for once?”

  The man in the back sniffed.

  “A bit of soap wouldn’t go astray,” he said.

  “Just shut up.”

  “What, are you a wee bit nervous, or something?”

  “You’re asking for it, I’m telling you.”

  “Might even wash off that borstal ink of yours. Two birds with one stone.”

  “Look, you stupid Northern bastard, who do you think you’re dealing with here?”

  “Here we go,” the man whispered. “That’s them.”

  Doyle looked back up the street. One of the men had a jet-black beard, the other a tight cut, almost a skin really, and a moustache. They were smiling about something. He wondered if they were really Arabs or something.

  “Move the car over to the lane, now. And leave it running. That’s where I’ll be.”

  Before Doyle had put it in gear, lizard-man had somehow stepped out and closed his door. Doyle stared at his back: how had he slid out like that, so quick? He thought about just driving off, getting the hell out of the city, and to hell with them all. He pulled on the balaclava instead, and tried not to panic.

  The two Albanians reached the laneway and stepped off the curb.

  The one with the beard was doing all the talking. Was there an Albanian language, Doyle wondered. There must be.

  The man walking out of the laneway had a black balaclava. Doyle saw the two guns, and for a moment tried not to believe it.

  The one with the moustache spun around as the shotgun went off. He fell against the railings, with something on his face and his chest, and he tried to hold on to them. He couldn’t stop himself sliding down, sitting down heavily, sagging sideways. The one with the beard had tried to head out on the street. The shotgun went off again, and the running man hit off the boot of a parked car and fell behind it.

  The one by the railings had curled up and he was trying to say something. Doyle saw the blood then on the cement. The man with the shotgun stepped over, put the barrel to the man’s head, and fired.

  Doyle wanted to shut his eyes, but he couldn’t. There was the sound of tires squealing on the street behind. Across the street he watched two women crouch, their hands at their mouths. This is actually happening, he thought.

  The man with the shotgun skipped across the footpath. He stopped and pointed an automatic down between the parked cars. The arm jerked and then he leaned down and fired again.

  It was himself who was talking, shouting, Doyle realized. There was a scream somewhere, a woman’s. Then the man with the gun was pulling open the door behind him. Where had he put the shotgun, Doyle wondered.

  “Go, get a move on. Go!”

  Doyle hit the accelerator hard. His stomach was giving way on him now. He had to find a jack, and now.

  The man in the back was breathing through his nose.

  “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,” Doyle muttered.

  “Watch the road. Stop looking in the mirror.”

  Doyle thought about slowing, fitting in with the traffic, just getting the two miles to the garage. But they’d have a description of the car.

  “You knew all along,” he said. “It was all decided, wasn’t it?”

  The man didn’t answer him. He looked in the mirror again. He had taken off his balaclava too. No cap now, and he’d been right about the wig. Completely bald, with weird little shadows and bumps all around. He
held the handle tight overhead as Doyle accelerated through the laneway toward the canal.

  Doyle got around two people on bicycles with a foot to spare. He heard one yell at him. He made the amber light by the bridge.

  “Talk to me! Answer me question, will you?”

  “Give over, will you, and just shut it a minute.”

  “No I won’t! The job said kneecap, that was the worst it would get, that’s all! No one said anything about topping anyone! But you knew all along, didn’t you?”

  “Calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down! I’m on the hook for this too, you bastard! If I’d a known this was going to happen, well I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

  He dodged a van coming out from the curb.

  “Slow down. You’ll just get us noticed.”

  “You’re an animal, that’s what you are. An animal . . .! Jesus! You come down here and you’re doing something like this—I mean, who said for you to do that? Who?”

  Doyle heard the sirens now, far behind. He took his place behind a bus. They were almost within sight of the turn for the garage.

  “This isn’t frigging West Belfast here pal, you don’t just pull something like that!”

  “Oh. I’m not welcome here anymore. Is that it?”

  “We’ll see how welcome you are when we get to the garage and Bobby hears what you done.”

  For a moment the man met his eyes in the mirror.

  “You’ve got some explaining to do, you hear me? You animal, you.”

  The eyes turned back toward the passing traffic.

  “I do believe that you’re losing it a wee bit,” the man murmured. “And you know it.”

  She’s Not a Crime Wave

  Minogue just didn’t know where to begin with Garda Hegarty. She stood in the middle of the hallway and pretended to study the names on the doors. She wasn’t going to make this one bit easier. Why would she, it was her job. He was out of order. Basically, he’d pulled rank. He should have kept his big mouth shut.