Islandbridge

by Brady, John

  Soon, Iseult reappeared in the garden. Minogue did not want to be seen staring at her.

  “She looks so lonely out there, Matt,” said Kathleen. “So preoccupied.”

  He could think of nothing to say to his wife that might console her. But he, did he want to say outright that he agreed either. He draped the dishtowel over the pots, and gave her a squeeze.

  Iseult was packed already. She would not let Minogue lift her carry-all.

  “You have your mobile?” Kathleen asked.

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Be sure and switch it on, or plug it in, you hear me?”

  Minogue was sure there was something strident in Kathleen’s voice. She stood on the footpath until he had driven out of sight.

  He slipped the Citroën easily into the traffic on the Kilmacud Road. The Citroën still floated on its pneumatic suspension as hypnotically as it did when he’d been captivated by it on a test drive all those years ago.

  “Ma is such a worrier,” Iseult said.

  “She’s not alone,” he said.

  “Don’t guilt me, Da. I have to get it done. It’s very important to me right now.”

  Minogue found himself whistling low.

  “I know what it means,” she said. “When you whistle. Bite your tongue, right?”

  “No, I don’t know that tune. It’s ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’ actually.”

  He saw that this got a smile out of her.

  She began talking about the material she’d found on the HyBrasil legend just the other day. Minogue listened, but he imagined Iseult’s words being drawn out the little gap in the back window into the twilight air. The Citroën seemed to tunnel its way farther through the greying streets, occasionally lightening with the lemon sky that glowed in the gaps between the buildings.

  “Any word from Daithi lately?”

  “No,” he said. “Divil a bit.”

  “God,” she said. “It’s the Y chromosome. All he has to do is lift the phone.”

  Minogue felt the urge to defend his son to his daughter. A very stupid notion.

  “I was thinking of getting him to get in touch with Jim Kilmartin’s young lad there. Get him to phone Jim and Maura Kilmartin. He might get the hint himself, then.”

  “Is he the same way, can’t lift a phone or bang out an email?”

  “Yes,” said Minogue. “Liam, the son and heir. And I think he’ll probably stay over there in the States.”

  “Huh. Not like our one – you’re hoping.”

  He looked over, and he saw immediately she regretted the remark.

  “Hope springs infernal,” he said. “But it’s harder for Jim. An only child.”

  “Huh,” she said, not ready to give up entirely. “I got one email at Easter from Daithi. I’ll bet it was Cathy made him send it.”

  “Come on now.”

  “It’s Cathy should move here, I’m telling you. The men, sure . . .”

  Minogue sped up a little, and whistled louder.

  She rummaged in her bag and took out her mobile.

  “Use mine,” he said, and drew his out. “Do, and save your minutes. The pay-as-you-go is a killer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’d be doing me a favour, so you would.”

  She took it with some reluctance.

  “Why don’t you have it on,” she said. “It doesn’t cost you.”

  “You’ve nowhere to hide if it’s on.”

  Minogue got a good run with the traffic lights coming down Georges Street. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to eavesdrop on Iseult’s conversation with her friend Orla, about Orla’s efforts to get an exhibition going in a new gallery near Mountjoy Square.

  Soon Minogue was turning up Dame Street, and taking the turn into the Temple Bar near the quays. Iseult’s studio was shared, and it had a strange schedule with a half-dozen other artists. It was in rough shape, with the owner holding out to get the permission he wanted for replacing it with apartments and a restaurant. The entrance was just before the street turned pedestrian only.

  Minogue wanted to say something hopeful, to see his daughter restored to her buoyant, haughty self of old.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You have four messages you have. Did you know that?”

  “Ah turn it off, I’ll get them later.”

  “Honestly,” she said. “Ma’s right. You just refuse to move on here. It’s just a thing, Da. It saves you time. It’s just being in touch.”

  “I’ve had enough of work today, let me tell you.”

  “Here’s two text messages from – your pal Malone. Sorry: Garda Malone. Will I read them out?”

  She heard his intake of breath.

  “Are they confidential? I forgot.”

  “No,” he said. “Might as well now.”

  “First says ‘phone me.’ That was only a half an hour ago. Got that?”

  “I did.”

  “Phone me – again. Ten minutes ago is the time for that, and . . . oh dear. Guards using bad language?”

  “What?”

  “Can I say it? It starts with a b and ends in t. There’s a male cow in it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “‘Condon bullshit,’ it says. Did I say it right? And it says urgent. Is it urgent? Bullshit? Urgent bullshit? What’s Condon?”

  “Enough,” he said. “Thanks.”

  He watched while she undid the locks on the galvanized door.

  “It’s all right, Da. There’s no one here.”

  “That’s what I’m concerned about. I wish there were someone.”

  “There will be – I’ll have my Canadian conceptual artist welder here in a while.”

  She undid the last lock. He looked up and down the laneway. There was always the reek of urine here from the boozers who came through from the Temple Bar. He looked in the darker shadows by the doorways for a glint from a syringe.

  “Are you sure you have enough minutes on your phone?”

  “Yes, I do. Really. Now go on, will you?”

  “You’ll get a few hours of a nap, won’t you? That old couch thing . . . ?”

  He gave her a hug, and slid the two fifty-euro notes into her cloth shoulder bag from Peru. She had spotted the move.

  “No,” he said. “Don’t be fighting me. Order a pizza or something.”

  He suspected he heard a sob from her, but he didn’t want to find out. She waved, but said nothing, and he saw her hand go to her face afterwards. He wanted to stop then, right in the middle of the street, and rush back and carry her off back to the home she had grown up in. He was angrier than he expected now, and he continued to swear calmly and methodically as he piloted the car over the cobblestones and toward the quays. The sharp trill from his phone stopped him. He picked it up from the seat where she had left it, and saw that it was Malone.

  He braked and stopped by the curb. For a moment he considered leaping out of the car and running to the quays, and flinging the phone as far as he could, and watching it splash and sink like a stone into the greasy swell of the River Liffey.

  Chapter 8

  MALONE HAD A SPOT near the door to the restaurant kitchen. He had a bottle of Chinese beer going. Minogue suspected it wasn’t his first. Mr. Chang was working the cash mostly. His spare words and slow way of moving reminded Minogue of a reptile, but of course he could never say it.

  Never effusive, seldom with sentences, Chang seemed to have registered Minogue as respectable. Malone was a different matter of course, and Chang managed with nods and quiet, sparing words. No quitter, Malone continued to patronize the restaurant at least once a week. He had told Minogue that he was working on wearing Chang down, just by enjoying the food. Sooner or later, Sonia Chang’s old man would see that he should change his mind about Thomas Malone, and give his blessing to Malone’s engagement to Sonia. Malone turned up at the restaurant whether Sonia was working there or not, as she still did, fitting in her obligations along with night courses.

  “How are you,” said Mal
one. “Want one of these?”

  Minogue eyed him.

  “No thanks.”

  “I’m ordering a take-out. Want some of that then?”

  Minogue shook his head.

  “First thing is this,” he said. “Are you going to pass on this tip you told me about on the phone, the way you should?”

  “Wait and we’ll see. It’s not a tip yet. It’s only a hunch.”

  “Tell me what you want to tell me,” Minogue said then. “And it better be good.”

  “Okay,” Malone said. “I’m going to start by asking you a question. How many times have you been down the Naas Road? The N7, like? On your way down the country, like.”

  “Is this a Gobán Saor story, Tommy?”

  “What’s a Gubawn Sare? Is it a curse word?”

  Minogue shook his head. He eyed the Chinese beer again, but decided against it. He brooded a few moments on the loss of the stories of Gobán Saor, literally the journeyman mason. Long a relic of primary schoolteachers in the country in a different age, the stories of the Gobán Saor had no chance these years, really. They would never show up in Riverdance, and that was a fact. What use could anyone here have for those instructive yarns of wit, wisdom, and correct behaviour from a Gaelic Ireland? That Ireland midwifed by spittle-flecked schoolmasters pressing their frightened students into the service of the Great Ireland Nation had disappeared for decades now.

  “How many times?” Malone asked again.

  “A million times. I don’t count. Why do you want to know?”

  “Did you ever stop in one of the places there, you know, the pubs or eating houses? All them new places sprouting up out there . . . ?”

  “Never. Wait – one of the kids had a bad stomach years ago and we were stopping every ten miles or so. I forgot. Some pub. The Red Cow maybe.”

  “Seen the place recently?”

  “Well yes. But I don’t be stopping in. It’s only a few miles out of Dublin.”

  “So then you don’t know the likes of what goes on there, do you?”

  “Not much, happily. But I hear the stories.”

  “The knocking shops, and all that?”

  Minogue watched Malone pouring the last of the beer.

  “All the truckers and the salesmen . . . ? The chancers and the skangers? The dealers and the fences and the tinkers and the thieves? Have I left out anyone?”

  Sonia appeared from the kitchen and laid a tray on a table where two young couples sat. She did not look over toward Malone. Minogue wondered how many hours a week she logged in, between helping here, and her studies, and her bookkeeping work.

  “I don’t know, Tommy,” he said. “That’s not my end of the patch, that stuff.”

  “A lot goes on out there, I can tell you.”

  Minogue watched the couple launch into a bowl of something, with chopsticks. Then he turned to Malone.

  “Do I get to say something now?” he asked him.

  Malone took another swallow of beer.

  “Only if you like,” Malone replied.

  “All right so,” he said then. “You’re going off your patch here with this. Have you noticed?”

  Malone’s eyelids slid down a little.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Aren’t you coming in sideways on someone else’s case, without telling them?”

  “The Condon thing? When I have something, I’ll put it out for them. I didn’t expect this stuff at all, remember I was telling you and Kilmartin the other day? I only went to Lawless on another thing, a heroin ring, the ones getting in stuff off boats down in Waterford and Cork, and that. I wasn’t expecting him to spin out any stuff about Condon, or Guards on the take, or that. I go where the information leads.”

  “The fact is, you should be talking to the ones doing the Condon investigation.”

  “I will, I will. Just as soon as I check out this tip tonight. Won’t take long – but the minute you leave Dublin, well anything’s liable to happen.”

  “What are you on about, ‘leave Dublin’?”

  “There’s someone I want to talk to, and I have to drive a bit out of town to do it.”

  “Who?”

  “Condon’s girl,” said Malone, in a voice little above a murmur.

  “You found her?”

  “Not exactly. But maybe someone who’d know where she is.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “I don’t actually have a name, a proper name. It changes, I think.”

  “No name? Changing name? Is she visible, or maybe invisible?”

  “If I knew I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?”

  “Tommy, think about this, will you. Think about what I’m thinking about, when I hear you talk like this.”

  “It’s the best I can do,” said Malone. “I heard ‘Marina’ but the illegals here move names around, and go under different names. She’s a foreigner though, for sure. Not much English, I was told – and she’s from someplace the far side of all them other places. Way over in there, you know what I’m saying?”

  Minogue shook his head. But Malone eyes rested on someplace on the wall of the restaurant where a portrait of a dragon hung.

  “Moldova,” said Malone. “Yeah, that’s it. Thank God I didn’t mind Geography. Moldova.”

  “Moldova,” said Minogue. He noticed Malone’s eyes were not focused at all.

  “Yeah,” said Malone. “But I’m not actually going to Moldova, am I.”

  “Where are you thinking of going, then?”

  “Oh, me and me take-out are going out into the car now in a minute, and we’re going off down the Naas Road.”

  “What’s there?”

  “The story I got is that she’s maybe part of that scene. The after-dark scene or the ‘late lunch’ crowd. You know?”

  Malone’s order was ready. Minogue watched Mr. Chang’s appraising eye linger on Malone, and then return to taking down an order on the phone. Was it Kilmartin who had told him that more of the hotel rooms along the Naas Road were actually booked during the day than in the evenings?

  “So?” Malone asked him.

  Minogue couldn’t persuade himself that he hadn’t seen it coming. It did not stop his irritation turning to anger, however. He glared up at Malone, but he knew immediately that the game had moved on.

  “Just get me back to me car there in good time so’s I can go home at a decent hour,” Minogue said.

  Malone shrugged, pulled at his nose, and pushed his Fiat into fifth. There was just one more junction before they’d get a clear run at the Naas Road.

  Minogue made sure the power was off on the mobile. The smell of the Chinese food had made him hungry now.

  The traffic coming into Dublin gathered in slow sullen herds at the traffic lights. Minogue eyed the aluminum plate that Malone had been forking noodles from while they talked. Malone made a face and swallowed slowly.

  “Sonia’s oul lad must have put frigging rat poison in that noodle thing.”

  Minogue spotted the building coming at them in the distance.

  “Is this where we’re meeting this fella,” Minogue asked. “Paddy Bang Bang?”

  “Not this gaff coming up, no,” Malone replied. “We’re going to the next one, The Roadhouse.”

  “Look,” he said after a few moments. “Just call him Paddy, or Mr. Finnegan, will you? The Bang Bang’s what got him into trouble in the first place. Okay?”

  Minogue said nothing, but turned instead to look at the full car park as they passed a place called Highway 66. There was a separate place for the transports and buses the far side of the sign. The sign was enormous, a composite of American highway signs, cowboy hats, and lariats next to some kind of an older-style American car.

  “Yeah,” Malone went on. “Paddy had a short fuse. This was back in primary school even. He used to get slagged something fierce, I’m telling you. No ‘special education’ them days. So one day, Paddy had enough. Scrawny fella he was then but wiry, like a monkey. Anyway. Out of nowhere, he came a
t one of the worst of them, a fella in fifth class, fancied himself I suppose. Up jumps Paddy, gives him one in the snot. Bang, he put him away.”

  “‘Bang?’”

  “A puck in the snot. Not a gun. God, what are you thinking there, a gun in primary school, in Crumlin?”

  “Maybe I was thinking of secondary.”

  “Paddy quietened down a good bit when he moved school. They found out he couldn’t read. Dy-dy– no, it’s not diarrhea. It’s where you can’t read.”

  Minogue nodded, but didn’t supply the word.

  “So someone called him Paddy Bang Bang and that was it?”

  “God, no. That was only a while ago that happened. You see, Paddy was never one of the crowd. For one thing he always liked farming and the woods and that. Growing up in Crumlin, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. But he had people out in Kildare. That was the saving of him really. Funny thing was, he got into the fishin’ and shootin’ you know, the rod and gun crowd. Of all things.”

  “With a temper like that?”

  “Ah, now. He did great – compared to what could’ve happened. He’s very handy, great carpenter. Didn’t he fall for this girl over visiting from, are you ready for it – Brazil. Where they make the nuts, right?”

  “I never knew that.”

  “It’s true. In the heel of the reel she came here to live and they have a place, a few acres not far off here. Still goes out with a gun but only on contract. There’s a ton of deer now, I swear to God, and there’s farmers are paying him to take a few. Paddy goes out lamping. It’s a bit pathetic, he says. The deer, they just look into the torch and he shoots them. Then he eats them. Honest to God. He even uses the fur.”

  “The hide.”

  “That’s right. He waits in a place he knows they’re likely to be. All night sometimes. He’s happy enough, he says, sitting in a ditch, in the rain. Snow, even. Does a lot of thinking on the job, he says.”

  “Then shooting.”

  “Not so much. ‘It might sound cruel,’ says he, ‘the lamping. But it’s not. They just freeze, so you get to shoot right.’”

  “Hence the bang bang.”

  “No. And will you stop interrupting me? That was remarks passed about his missus. You know the kind of music they do like over in them places, Brazil and that? It’s very, you know, cha-cha and all that. Dance stuff, right? So there were jokes going around, you know, the hot-blooded people and the topless beach thing in Rio. The ‘bang bang’ thing. So of course that sort of attaches itself to his missus. Slagging, like? They were jealous of him, the locals. I mean, I hear she’s gorgeous. So Paddy hears about it, one particular fella, and he, well, he . . .”