by John Brady
The light went green just as Quinn felt the idea slam into his brain. He began trying to figure out which lane would let him get down to the south quays. He could be there in a half-hour, even less maybe.
Maybe Beans wasn’t that thick after all, he thought. Maybe he had the right idea in general, but he was just too out of it or even impatient greedy, more like it—to get it working right. Maybe he thought it was as easy as that gobshite had told him. But he’d want to see it in action, a bit anyway. He wasn’t that thick.
He got in ahead of a lorry and made it around onto the quay. He thought ahead to the turns he’d make to get him up through Ballsbridge and out by Donnybrook. No, he remembered as he got the Astra into third and gave it a heavy foot, he’d never heard the fella’s name. But he was a regular there in Wonderland it looked like. He’d find him soon enough. The fella with the stammer—Video Boy would do for a name for now. Beans Canning, genius, would be sitting right next to him. Not even a clue that the maniacs up North were out for him.
He was up to the lights in Ballsbridge before the tightness came back into his chest. He hadn’t been breathing right, he realized. He didn’t mind admitting it was either fear or something too close to it. He stared at the sign by the bridge pointing to the N7 and tried to blot out Grogan’s face, that expression he’d seen on him in that restaurant in Drogheda. It could be the RUC had picked him up for something, just to keep him on his toes. But that had stopped a couple of years ago with the Peace thing.
If it were true, what Grogan had said, he thought. Canning didn’t deserve all this running around and bullshit, that was a fact. But no one was going to talk down a phone from Belfast and decide what Canning did or didn’t deserve.
Wonderland
Detective Carroll was a taciturn mesomorph from Galway. His tiny hands, which Minogue had to fight himself to stop gawking at, just didn’t go with an air of combativeness. Minogue doubted he could work around this man for long. Obviously busy, obviously not in a humour of passing on information to an Inspector outside the Holy of Holies that was Drugs Central. No invite to sit either.
Minogue and Malone stood by Carroll’s desk. Carroll nodded and chewed occasionally at moustache hairs that curled in to the edges of his mouth. Minogue wondered if Carroll would have words with Malone about this later.
“That’s right,” Carroll said. “It was them filed this. They’d know Gannon too.”
“In Bray.”
Carroll nodded.
No need to be so bloody talkative, Minogue wanted to say.
“So,” he began again. “There’d be an in there with this fella, for Doyle, I mean. Sort of mates, confederates?”
“That’d be a reasonable assumption,” Carroll said.
“You weren’t out there yourself?”
“In Bray?”
“Yes, in Bray.”
“No, no. I wouldn’t be going out there. No.”
Minogue had to think another way to crowbar anything out of this Galwegian.
“Not my cup of tea at all, no. Drug Squad in Bray would be well versed in that.”
“You just know of this associate, the Gannon head, by the way, is that it?”
“That’d be it now.”
“The way you’d be hearing a name mentioned.”
“Now you have it,” Carroll said.
Minogue looked up from the file.
“Well, Dermot,” he said. “You’re like the rest of the Galway team.”
“What makes you think that now?”
“We can’t get the ball off you at all.”
“Well, that’s how the game is played, isn’t it?”
“You’d nearly be tempted to use the stick just to get the game going, but.”
“Would you now.”
“And take the penalty,” Minogue added. “Whatever it is.”
“You’re well known for overuse of the hurley in Clare,” he said. “But there are no cups for that, are there.”
Minogue summoned up a smile. It wasn’t easy.
Sometimes the satisfaction of a good clout is better value.
Carroll chewed on his moustache once, and gave Malone a lingering look.
“He has a tough case,” Malone said. “There’s nothing to go on. Right?”
Minogue nodded.
“He is a tough case, you mean,” Carroll said. “Along with Kilmartin and the rest of them in that outfit. Don’t think we lead a sheltered life here.”
Malone shuffled his feet. Minogue heard him crack his knuckles. Yes, he had to concede, Jim Kilmartin’s chariot had spattered many a department over the years. He wondered if Carroll had heard about the mess with Fiona Hegarty too.
“So it’s likely that Doyle could have been there in Bray then,” he said. “If he’s a crony of this Gannon fella.”
“Possible,” said Carroll.
Minogue gave up. They headed back down the hall.
“Everyone guards their patch,” Malone said.
Minogue phoned Donnybrook station. Tunney wasn’t around; Detective Collins was. He didn’t want to phone Tunney’s mobile, no.
“So I won’t be by until, maybe the morning,” he said.
“OK,” Collins said. “I’ll tell him. And you’ll talk to him about the two girls, her friends, in the morning?”
“That’s right.”
He heard Collins turning a page.
“Me pen’s gone,” Collins said. “Give me a minute. . .. So you reckon the pair know more than they let on?”
Minogue didn’t answer. He hated being prompted to keep a conversation going. It was like turning on a television or a radio for background.
“. . . and you said you’re following a lead in Bray, is it?”
“I am. There might be a go on where Niamh Kenny got those things, those pills.”
“. . . pills . . .”
“Did you get all that?”
“. . . in Bray . . . I did.”
“If he wants to know, it’s a place called Wonderland I’m heading to.”
“. . . Wonderland? You’re serious?”
“Just the way it sounds. Yes I’m going to Wonderland. Got it?”
“I do. I’ll leave the note for him, so I will.”
Leave the Fights in the Ring
Minogue put the mobile on the dash of the Nissan. The sun had made an appearance, and the traffic was flying by on the N7 toward Bray. His hangover ache had disappeared. There was also that lightness in his chest that he hadn’t felt since they’d put through the last case in the Squad. Seven, eight months already, he couldn’t stop thinking.
Inland, the hump of Katty Gallagher and the hills behind were almost glowing with colour. The wind rushed across the two policemen, scattered some papers on the back seat.
“I’m going to tell you something now,” Malone said. “And you’re going to keep it under your hat. Right?”
“Royh-at.”
“You reckon this is a good time for slagging me?”
“Imitation is the sincerest form form of flattery.”
“Whatever that means. It’s not like a culchie can talk right, you know.”
The seaside, Minogue thought then, that’s what had him a bit giddy. Out of the city, imagining that Daithi and Iseult were infants again; that there’d be Fanta and sandwiches and mullocking around on the beach in Greystones.
“What were you going to tell me?”
“Nothing. It’s all right.”
“Was it about how what’s his face, Carroll, is going to be very put out, about giving away a precious morsel, is it?”
“No. Carroll’s an iijit. A lot of them are like that still. They want to keep everything in the shop. No.”
“Go on then.”
“No. It’s okay. I’ll tell you later maybe. Just to get your reaction, like.”
Minogue let his hand run along the rubber seal where the window had slid down. He had rolled up his sleeves. He lifted his watch to see what the sun had done this past while. He thou
ght of father Ted’s housekeeper, whatever her name was.
“Ah go on,” he said to Malone. “Go on, go on, go on.”
“Feck off, why don’t you.”
“Feck off, Inspector, I think you mean?”
“Okay. Feck off, Inspector. Now, you happy? What has you so bleeding chipper then? Are you taking something?”
“Maybe I am. Are you?”
Malone looked over, and then pulled out to pass a minibus.
“Okay then, I will,” Malone said. “The thing is, it was no big deal when I thought about it.”
Minogue waited.
“I mean, you did it,” Malone went on. “So it couldn’t be a big deal.”
Minogue glanced over.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m booked to see a shrink. That’s what.”
Minogue watched the road lines slide over as Malone took the exit to Bray.
“So there,” Malone said. “What do you think about that, huh.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“Mine.”
Minogue looked up at the chestnut trees as they passed through Little Bray. He wanted to ask Malone questions about Sonia Chang, about her accent and her family and the Chinese restaurant her family had started up in Whitehall, and her studies to become an accountant. He wanted Malone to tell him how they had started dating.
“It’ll help me to, you know, evolve.”
Minogue looked back at a kebab restaurant.
“Leave the fights in the ring, is that the idea?”
“That’s about it,” said Malone.
He turned in off the Main Street by the hotel and waited while a lorry backed out of a lane. There were cars parked everywhere. A group of foreign-looking teenagers came around the corner. Minogue waited to hear them better. The freckly ones, the girls with sunburned noses and shoulders, were the Irish ones for sure, the hangers-on. One of the boys, a very cool customer with wraparound sunglasses, started singing and two of his friends joined in, waving their depleted cones. Spanish it was he was hearing. Minogue saw that a lot of them had jumpers around their waists. No, señor, we do not trust this Irish weather, no way José. The girls were in regulation pop starlet skimpy. No doubt the beachfront was crawling with kids now the sun was out.
Malone made it around the lorry at last. Soon they were by the terrace of houses that looked south down the beachfront.
“The bit of sun brings everyone out, beJaysus,” Malone said. “Like lab rats.”
Minogue looked down at the traffic, stopped the most of it, and the people in groups along the grass and the promenade. Malone grunted and turned the Nissan up on a patch of curb. Minogue heard a metallic clink during the manoeuvre.
“Might as well walk, I’m telling you,” he said.
It took Minogue a moment to figure out why Malone had put on his jacket. Drug Squad detectives almost always stayed armed on duty now. He reached in and took his own jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
The hotels and pubs had put out their umbrellas. There was tinkling music from farther down the arcades. They walked on the roadway, between the parked cars and the idling traffic, toward the end of the promenade. The malty smell of a pub filtered out to Minogue more than once. It was too much to leave Bray later on without helping out the local economy a bit then, he decided.
A motorist with a family in the car was half out his door. He was angry with another one who had taken a parking spot. Minogue’s eyes met the wife’s, a woman with a flushed face and a jaded look.
Bray Head grew higher as they threaded their way down through the crowds. He spotted a family entertainment arcade with screens flashing and people hanging around near the doors. The racket coming out of the place was fanned out on a hot breeze of candy floss and vinegary chips. Young fellas not more than nine or ten were shooting bad guys with startling realism. Oodles of blood, jumping figures, and a wild racket of noise. He paused to look in at bumper cars sparking and crashing at the back of an arcade.
Malone stopped and stepped into the shade.
“We’re coming up to the place now, I think. How do you want to work it?”
“I’ll wander in on me own for starters. Give me a few seconds and then you mosey in and keep your distance,” Minogue said.
“All right so.”
“It’s Doyle we want to get to. If he’s lying low, I don’t want to set him off again. And go for Gannon if we see him too?”
“Fair enough.”
Minogue didn’t want to take out the folded paper with the printout from Gannon’s record.
“So,” he said. “Brendan Gannon. He has a bit of speech impediment thing going on there, it says.”
“A bit like yourself.”
“You can talk, you’re a Dub.”
“I don’t mean the accent, man. So maybe you’ll tell me what you’re bursting to talk to him about? This mysterious long shot you’re talking about?”
A Little Talking-To about Loyalty
Quinn thought about turning back when he saw the traffic already building up before it was even close to the seafront. This wasn’t his caper at all, he thought while he followed traffic on its stop-start way up the hill toward the Royal Hotel. It was really none of his business if Canning wanted to dig himself into a hole.
The sun had come out, and it began to heat the interior of the car quickly. Groups of people, teenagers mostly, were headed down the footpaths toward the seafront. That’s how desperate we were here, he thought. In Portugal, you could get up in the morning and know you were going to have blue skies all day long.
He imagined turning around and just cruising back into town, going home, and . . . taking Catherine out for a jar. He’d pick his time to tell her. Tell her what? Well, a fortnight in Portugal, that’s what. Tell her he had to stay out of the way until something got settled. Or tell her he was going to find out if his old mate Beans Canning had judassed him?
He found an opening and he turned down toward the seafront. It was jammed solid at the far end. He pulled in at a gate, and he looked at his phone. This was not smart, what he was doing. Not smart at all: he was losing it, basically. He should keep trying to reach Beans or his missus. He had to go with what he knew. It was one of those types of things happening that looked bad but turned out to be just weird, coincidence, fate. He could ask Irene, right. As if.
He dialled Canning’s home number. It was answered right after the first ring.
“Jacqueline?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Bobby. I’m glad I got you. Look it, I’ve been looking for Beans all day. Where is he? Why’s he not answering his phone?”
“Well, I only got home a minute ago, didn’t I, Bobby . . .”
There was something in her voice he wasn’t used to. She was always kind of, well, not exactly cheerful, but up.
“. . . The phone never stops ringing here today, for God’s sake. I do Friday nights so I get this afternoon off, so I don’t know, you know . . .”
“Is he around then?”
“Well actually, like, he’s not. No.”
It was the way she finished what she was saying, a sort of a down note, like that was final.
“Is there something wrong, Jacqueline.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Is there?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’d like to get a hold of him. You know?”
She said nothing. He thought he heard her sigh.
“I don’t have a problem,” he said to her.
“Well, you know,” she began, but stopped.
“Go on. What are you getting at?”
“Didn’t he talk to you though?”
“No he didn’t. I wish he had.”
“This is awkward Bobby, you know. He wouldn’t want me talking.”
“Talking about what?”
“Look. I’ll tell him you phoned, that’s the best.”
“No, it isn’t, Jacqueline! Sorry, sorry. Listen. Sorry—really. But I
have to talk to him. It’s really, really important.”
She said nothing. He wondered if she was going to hang up.
“Jacqueline?”
“Yeah, Bobby.”
“You have to tell him. I don’t know what his problem is, but it’s going to get out of hand if he doesn’t get in touch.”
Still she had nothing to say. He watched two skinheads carrying a plastic bag with bottles in it.
“So will you do that for me? Will you, Jacqueline? To phone me right away?”
“Okay. I’ll tell him.”
“Thanks, look I’ll be waiting on him now. Tell him that.”
“Fine.”
Quinn waited. She was still on the line.
“Is everything okay there, Jacqueline? I mean, is there someone there, you can’t talk?”
“No, I’m okay. It’s just, well, it’s between you and him. I better leave it at that.”
“Jacqueline, listen. You have to believe me here. Trust me now. Okay? We all want what’s best, right?”
“Okay.”
“Well, where is he. You know I’ve got a feeling maybe you know and all . . . do you know?”
“No.”
“He didn’t tell you anything?”
“No. He’s started drinking, that’s all. I hope he’s not going to, you know.”
“I’ll talk to him, Jacqueline. I will. I’ll straighten him out—but nice. Really.”
“I don’t know if he wants that, Bobby. From you, like.”
The car was beginning to bake now in the sun. He pulled at the visor to get a bit of shade on his neck.
“Jackie, listen to me. You’re worried, I can tell. We’re on the same side here. Come on.”
“Well,” she began.