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

by John Brady

  “How long is he in for?”

  “He’s done two year out of a five to seven. He had a knife in the break-in. They threw everything at him. He has eighteen months before he can apply.”

  “And he’s . . .”

  “Yeah. There’s no bother getting stuff in there.”

  “They can’t stop it at the prison?”

  Malone shook his head.

  “Someone gave him bad stuff. Or at least they got to his supplier . . .”

  Minogue waited.

  “Terry has, well, no will power really. He doesn’t want, well, you know what I’m saying. There’s damage done to the part of the brain that—ah, what am I talking about? It only makes me mad. I’m not a frigging doctor. It’s just bad. Bad.”

  Malone was studying the ceiling now. Minogue heard his breathing slow again.

  “That’s fierce pressure, Tommy. Fierce.”

  “The way it works,” Malone began, “is, you just get a hint. Okay, picture this: there you are in your own local. You’re having a pint, life is good, and all that. Then a fella walks up to you, orders a pint. Stands there, waiting. ‘How’s it going,’ says he. And you say nothing ’because you know he’s a gouger. Then he says to you, you know, something like this: ‘So-and-so has a lot of respect for you.’ Or ‘So-and-so’d like to help out.’ ‘You should get in touch with so-and-so, he’d like to hear your opinion.’”

  “Money?”

  “They never say. I keep track of them, file them with the Squad. Nothing much happens, but we’re aware of it. It’s part of the job, know what I’m saying? But this Doyle, he went over the top. The cheek, see? Right in me face. That’s why I’m thinking he got sent.”

  “You were in the chipper first, were you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He started the thing?”

  “Well, what do you think? I’m there with me girlfriend, and I’m going to get into a barney with some head? What, to impress her or something? Come on, boss.”

  Minogue stared back. Then Malone shook his head, and looked away.

  “Okay,” he said. “I lost it. I wanted him hurt.”

  “Were you, are you, carrying?”

  “Course I was. I have to. But that was never in the picture.”

  “You said you wanted him hurt, but . . .”

  Malone shook his head, he smiled grimly, and he sat back.

  “Come on, boss, for Jaysus’ sake. I mean a tune-up. You know, just to park him, good him proper. Maybe even give him some plaster to carry around a while. But I’d never pull a gun on a fella. No way.”

  Minogue took in the mind-made-up look. He remembered Kilmartin telling him that that very look would stop Malone ever getting Sergeant.

  “He starts out with some guff,” Malone murmured. “Some slagging, you know, cops guarding fish and chip shops. I ignore him. But he starts trying to get the fella behind the counter in on it, Tony.”

  “Tony.”

  “Yeah. Tony’s the son there. He’s not the smartest. Seriously, he’s a bit simple, like. But Tony wasn’t having any of it. I should have left, I know, I know. So Doyle really starts getting aggravating. What, do I have to be Russian to get taken seriously around here. That sort of thing. You get the Russian thing?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s a thing over at Central. There’s a lot going on in that line, how there’s a Russian connection showing up all over the kip. Or fellas fronting for them—Eastern Europe. I’ll bet you ten pints you’ll be getting the tour of that section when they send you over, when is it?”

  “The end of September, as it stands now.”

  Malone gave Minogue a moment but the Inspector wasn’t biting.

  “What,” Malone said. “You’re not excited about Fraud? Come on. Criminal Asset Bureau? Getting together with coppers on the continent and all that?”

  “I don’t get that level, no. Anyway, finish with this thing. Your man’s needling away at you.”

  “Right. ‘The Russians’ thing. There was quite the smash last month when two fellas started up their own racket or tried to. It was over in Dorset Street. Two Russians in actual fact, just in off the plane. They try to put the heavy word on two pubs there. Like one pub wasn’t enough for them. One of them’s The Rambler’s Rest. Came in with the proposition, you know, show us some money every week or call the fire brigade. No translation needed there. Trouble was, the IRA had a connection to a partner owns the pub. The got a hold of the two Russians the next and them coming back to collect, or so they thought. You saw that, right?”

  Minogue nodded. It had been in the papers. One of the Russians lost an eye.

  “So there I am in the chipper. Tony has me money, and I’m just waiting for the chips. But this bastard, this fu—, this bollocks, he won’t take a hint. I’m thinking, yeah, I should walk. Here I am, half-jarred, beginning to get very annoyed, know what I’m saying, and I’m on the 24-hour detail carrying a gun. But no, I says to myself. It’s my town. I live here. Me and Terry never got handed anything. I made it, see? I didn’t turn out like this creeping Jesus in front of me.”

  “You mean Doyle, I take it.”

  “Right. But even after all this I’m holding up not so bad. I even get me chips and I’m heading out. But Doyle wants to stick it to me, says in my ear and going by, he says ‘You’re letting your own brother die, ’because you won’t play ball.’”

  Malone’s eyes slipped out of focus.

  “What did he mean, in your mind at the time?”

  “Ah come on. What are you, Alice in Wonderland, or what?”

  “Spell it out for me. Someone else might be asking, so get used to it.”

  “Okay. That if I got on board, you know, that if I would make the odd phone call, get on the payroll, Terry wouldn’t be going downhill the way he is.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Did I think he knew what he was talking about?”

  “Did you believe him, right then and there—not thinking it over later now?”

  “Well yeah, I believed him.”

  “What happened then, after that. In the chipper.”

  “Well, I stopped. And I turned round. And I looked at him. He’s smiling. He knows he’s gotten to me. And he’s shifting around on his feet ’because he thinks he’s something too. Like, he’s heavy enough and he’s got reach, and he’s made a few bob hurting people. But even then, you know, I would’ve walked. I really would have. Maybe he knew too, so he just had to go over the top, right.”

  “Did he take a poke at you?”

  “No he didn’t. What he said was, ‘Phone Bobby. He can stop what they’re doing to your brother. If and you don’t lift the phone, you’re killing your own brother.’”

  A sudden screech from one went right into Minogue’s fillings. A mother with two children in the one collapsible buggy was going through the wars near the cashier.

  “Anyway,” Malone said. “The arse fairly fell out of things then at that stage. But I do remember holding one back, I do.”

  Minogue looked at him.

  “A lights-out, is what I’m saying. You know? He was wide open.”

  “Mother Teresa, you are.”

  “Easy for you to say. Fact is, I knew it looked bad in front of herself. I mean, you don’t know her. She’s a very kind of, well what’s the point of talking. I just didn’t want to hurt her, if you can believe that. Her feelings.”

  “Shy.”

  “As a matter of fact she is,” said Malone. “She’s fierce shy.”

  “So. What then?”

  “Nothing much. The bastard picks himself up, dusts himself off. I think he only cut his hand. As well as maybe a shiner and a good-sized headache. He heads off under his own steam, a bit shaky, fair enough, but he gives me this look. And you know what? And he’s smiling. I told them I’d pay the damage. The table . . .?”

  “Smiling, you say.”

  “Yeah. Like he got me. Like I fell for it. Whatever it is.”

&nbs
p; Unbelievable

  The man in the back had gone limp, like he was completely shagged, his head resting against the top of the seat where it met the pillar. Doyle could still hear sirens in the distance. The air conditioning was giving him the shivers now. He guessed that it had probably kept him from puking. But if everything was so sharp and bright, why was he still wondering if this had really happened. No, he decided, he wasn’t tripping.

  Doyle took the turn into the back of the garage hard. The front end of the Opel bottomed on the bump and the man sat forward.

  The door was closed.

  “Christ’s sakes, open the door, whoever you are.”

  The man in the back was rearranging his jacket.

  “Come on, come on—”

  The door began to rise. It was Quinn himself pulling on the chain inside the garage.

  “Jaysus! Where am I supposed to put it? There’s no room there.”

  He rolled down the window. The smell of paint stung in his nostrils. He saw that the plastic curtains had been used a lot already. He looked out at Quinn.

  “Put it tight to the wall,” Quinn said. “Climb out the passenger side.”

  Doyle turned the wheel full, corrected it as he got the Opel by the doorway and he brought it up toward the bench near the compressors.

  The door was already closing behind them. The gloom felt like shelter. The door hit the cement and Quinn tied up the chain. Doyle turned off the engine. The man in the back was stuffing his cap and wig into a plastic bag

  Doyle was swearing, slapping the steering wheel. He stopped and he ran his hands down his face and he shook his head.

  “Bobby,” he called out. “Do you know what he went and did? Do you?”

  Quinn cupped his hand around his ear.

  “This guy,” Doyle said. “He went mental. Did you know he was going to do that?”

  Quinn watched the man in the back seat open the door and toss a sports bag out onto the floor.

  “We have to sort this out, Bobby,” Doyle said. “No way I’d a gone along if this was the plan, no way, you hear me?”

  Quinn heard the creaking of the suspension as Doyle began to heave himself over the handbrake toward the passenger seat.

  “I mean, you never said . . .,” Doyle called out. “I mean, what happened is mad - and I’m in up to me neck here Bobby. You have to look after me for this. This isn’t some little barney you got me into. I’ve got to go somewhere, got to lie low or something.”

  Doyle stopped shouting then, his hand on the dashboard. For a moment he seemed to be curious about how quiet it was now, or how the man in the back hadn’t gotten out.

  He instinctively turned his head away, even managed to shout and to raise his hand, but the bullet tore through that on its way to shattering the bone behind his ear.

  Mighty Quinn

  The Nissan car company needn’t have bothered putting in any gears after third: Malone was as bad a mangler of gearboxes as ever.

  Minogue switched off his mobile. There had been no messages. Somehow, the Fraud Squad had been managing without him for an hour now. Right about now, Fiona Hegarty would be going upstairs on him for shoving counsel at the Halloran woman.

  Minogue tried the radio presets. Malone had none for RTE.

  “What,” said Malone.

  “I want to hear the news,” Minogue said. “About that shooting.”

  He found it just in time to hear that Connolly, a tireless bore of a Chief Super to judge by off-duty shindigs where he’d met him in company with Kilmartin, was “in charge of the investigation.” Connolly went into the routine code: ascertain information regarding, liaise with agencies both at home and abroad, some difficulty in verifying documentation regarding the identity of the victims. He mauled the names, Minogue was sure, and then regretted the judgement on Connolly’s command of Albanian. He threw in plenty of extras, many of which Minogue didn’t doubt were sincere: unprecedented, callous.

  “Did you ever think you’d see the day? That kind of thing? Here, like?”

  Minogue shook his head.

  “Ahh-med,” Malone murmured. “That’s Arabian I’d swear.”

  “Arabic.”

  “Right. Coming of age, we are, is that the expression?”

  Minogue had seen the road signs against the hostels for refugees in Wexford, heard the querulous voices on the radio phoning in to say that they were not in any way prejudiced toward foreigners, but . . . The hardest to take had been the whingeing from people on waiting lists for County Council and Dublin Corporation houses about refugees jumping the queue, and what about people born here, the real Irish people.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “I mean, do you think those two were above board?”

  “Kilmartin had been talking about budgets for detectives going to places like Moscow and Sofia where they’d better learn in a hurry how to deal with what was coming.”

  “I don’t know who’s above board these days, Tommy.”

  Malone managed to hit every pothole coming through Terenure. Minogue opened his eyes after a particularly jolting one.

  “Sure I’m not keeping you from the job,” Malone said.

  “I was working on a mission statement, so I was.”

  “You were on your hole.”

  Minogue looked over at him.

  “Well, I mean is I don’t want you getting your arse in the wringer over this thing.”

  “Were you ever in Spain?” Minogue asked.

  “Spain? To do with work, gangsters from here, you mean?”

  “No. Recreating.”

  “Well, yeah. A few years back. I went with a crowd.”

  “Was it nice there?”

  “It was all right. It got a bit wild. The clubs and that. I don’t like that class of thing.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Yeah. That’s for the Brits, you know, the soccer crowd to do. I had to come home for a rest from me holidays. Why, you thinking of heading over?”

  “No. I was just trying to think what it would be like.”

  “Kathleen maybe?”

  Minogue eyed him.

  “I’m only asking. People nowadays, you know.”

  Malone got through Terenure finally and turned up for Tempelogue. Minogue wondered if Jennifer Halloran would phone her ma. Maybe she’d just find her own way home and tell her later on. Ma, don’t wait up for me, I’m going to jail.

  “I’m going to stay out of it, you’re going to talk, right?”

  “That’s it, Tommy. You’re not going to give him a puck or the like.”

  “Well, as long as you’re happy with your slagging, I’m happy.”

  “You can stare at him a lot though.”

  “All we’re doing is going to see Quinn so’s you can let him there’s no dice,” Malone said. “To be absolutely straight. Right?”

  Minogue nodded.

  Malone parked beside a row of shops. Quinn’s haulage office was upstairs. Malone looked around the houses across the street.

  “There could be surveillance on here,” he said. “Not just ours, there’s joint task force stuff we don’t get told about.”

  “No matter,” said Minogue.

  Minogue followed Malone up the stairs. They passed a tanning studio cum manicurist. An impossibly tanned woman passed them in the hall.

  Mighty Haulage was easy to miss, a door only. There was carpet inside, a receptionist, with a glass door to the side of her desk. Not too many lorry drivers tramping through here, Minogue decided.

  The long blinks from the woman at the desk told Minogue she had made them for Guards. Mr. Quinn was not in the office at the moment. Could she take a message?

  “When’ll he be back,” Minogue asked her.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  The eyelashes batting again. A Princess Diana move, God rest the poor woman.

  “Can I trouble you for his mobile phone number, so?”

  “I don�
�t know if he has one.”

  “Are you the secretary here, Miss?”

  “I’m the office manager.”

  “But you don’t know how to reach your boss? And you don’t know if he has a cell phone? The head of a haulage company. . .. That beggars belief, to be sure.”

  “Beggars,” she said. “What are you getting at?”

  “Can we try again? See if maybe you can find a number written somewhere.”

  Her eyes took on a glazed look that Minogue recognized from time in court.

  “Who are you?”

  Minogue flipped his photocard.

  “As is my colleague here.”

  “What’s this concerning?”

  “We’ll be working that out with Mr. Quinn.”

  “I have to know,” she began.

  Minogue pulled open the door. She was up and after them fairly quickly.

  “You can’t just barge in there,” she said.

  Someone was smoking a cigarette hereabouts.

  “Mr. Quinn?”

  There was a sound of a chair rolling across the floor from a room to his left. “Manager” was inscribed on a plaque, next to a shiny, embossed picture of a truck. Minogue turned the handle. A short man in a leather jacket was standing by a desk. Minogue looked around. The fittings were actually pricey, real oak furniture, brassy stuff. A television was on. It was some kind of motorbike racing from a satellite channel.

  “Who are youse?”

  Minogue looked over the barrel chest. The necklace and the ring matched.

  “Well, who are you,” Minogue said.

  The secretary was in behind them now.

  “They just barged in, so they did,” she said. “These Guards. I told them Mr. Quinn wasn’t here but they just went in anyway.”

  The man frowned and looked at Malone.

  “You, you bastard,” he said.

  “And yourself,” Malone said. “How is it going.”

  “It was going not so bad, until youse two started trespassing. Show us a warrant.”

  Minogue tried his father confessor smile.

  “Ah sure, what would we need a warrant for?”

  “Oh here you go, like you can’t think of anything new.”

  He came around the desk and stood with his hands on his hips. The bracelet slipped down over his left wrist. He lifted his arm to shake it back down. He stopped twisting it when he saw Minogue was watching.