by Brady, John
He gave his mobile number again. He was told to leave the connection open.
Malone’s face was white. Minogue saw that his hands were shaking.
Malone seemed to want to say something. The Englishman’s beery breath was all around them now. He was reaching out to try to shake Malone’s hands. Over the talk and the odd shout Minogue heard a siren.
He knows what he’s about, he thought. He’d be through traffic like a flash and he could go anywhere with a motorbike. He left his hand on Malone’s shoulder, watched the darting eyes and wondered if Malone might vomit or something.
“Look,” he heard several people in the crowd say. Suddenly there was a siren close by.
In a few moments he saw the flashing blue from a second squad car on the walls, and he pressed his mobile to his ear harder. He wondered, but didn’t care, if Malone might erupt on this half-drunken iijit now trying to shake his hand.
“I been under fire mate, I know what it’s like, okay? Irish Guards, you know? The Queen Mum’s boys? No ’arm, okay? Really. I’m Garry, mate. Okay? No ’arm?”
Malone let his hand be shaken, but kept his eye on the Arch. Minogue was finally driven to turn on the drunken yob turned maudlin conciliator, Mr. Nigel Englishman.
“Will you just give over there?”
Minogue wasn’t much pleased to be taken seriously at last.
“Just go,” he said to the outstretched hand, and watched as the man made off sideways, still trying to keep up eye contact while he kept mouthing something that could have been remorse.
The sets of running footsteps were winded detectives with their guns drawn. Over the siren Minogue still heard muffled yells, even yelps, from people nearby. In moments, a fainter siren joined the first. It remained out of sync, but grew stronger as it was funnelled up to them through the arch from the quays. Two older women were making their way up the steps there now. He heard Malone take a deep breath and exhale.
“That was close enough, Tommy.”
Malone nodded but didn’t take his eyes off the two women who had now stopped.
“Why is crap like this always happening to me,” he whispered, hoarsely.
Slowly, Minogue stood upright. The crowd, began to reform, and seemed to be getting bigger fast. Mouths were dropping open, and Minogue guessed by some expressions on others’ faces that they were skeptical. Blue light from the roof lights pulsed on the metal and glass of the shops opposite; an engine was racing in high gear, tires shrieking.
He waved one of the detectives over. Someone spoke to him from the Emergency switch, a different man’s voice. He asked if there were personnel at the scene now. It took Minogue a moment to figure out what personnel meant again. He’d been thinking of how shock might take hold of Malone, of what ‘no ’arm’ that gobshite had been going on about.
Two more Guards appeared, running up the steps from the quays, and Minogue watched the women almost fall to the wall. The bastard is long gone, he decided.
The voice on the phone asked again if the Guards had arrived.
“They have,” Minogue said.
Could he hang up now but continue to make the line free? He could, he told him. He stepped over to Malone. The first detective over had two orange-red spots high on his cheeks from his exertions running here. Minogue wanted to tell him to put the gun away.
“George?” the detective repeated. “That’s the name?”
Some uniforms had arrived now. Minogue’s chest felt achy and full of something swollen, and chill. This was the time your brain catches up a bit with what happened, he knew. Malone too seemed suddenly exhausted, and he stood now with his head down, answering the detective in small nods and shrugs. Once he turned his head, bruise toward the detective, and shook his head to a question.
“A motorbike,” the detective next to Minogue muttered. “He’ll cover plenty of ground on that.”
Minogue let his eye contact last a few moments. The detective got the hint. He had to rip the Velcro back twice after settling the pistol, to place it snuggly in the shoulder pouch. The detective said something to another, who turned away and spoke into a walkie talkie.
“Let’s go over to the car,” he said to Minogue. “You and your mate. Malone, is it? Get some details?”
Minogue ignored, as did Malone, the four men now turning their way as they passed. Again he heard the “no ’arm mate.” Malone snapped his head up and turned and took a quick step toward them. The uniformed Guard brought up his notebook to stop Malone. Minogue didn’t hear what Malone said between his gritted teeth, but at least two of the words started with an F.
Chapter 21
September 11, 1993
RYNN’S BUSINESS, Victory Meat Packers, was nothing to do with meat processing, Maura Kilmartin found out. It wasn’t a nothing, it was a shell, a tax hole probably. She’d asked Róisín to see if there was anyone she knew in the Revenue Commissioners who could do a little digging for her. Róisín said she’d look into it. By the way she said it, Maura believed she would prefer not to, and she was glad she hadn’t mentioned who she’d wanted to find out about. It didn’t come up again.
When she phoned the number for Rynn, a woman answered. Was this Victory Meats? Who wanted to know, was the answer. Maura asked if this was the right number for a Mister Rynn. In the few seconds’ delay before the woman answered, Maura heard a hand rubbing over the mouthpiece at the far end, and the woman shouting out “Da.”
“He says, who are you?”
“An employment agency, Mr. Rynn contacted us.”
She heard a man’s voice in the background, and then a cough.
“He’ll be with you in a minute,” the woman said, and held her hand over the mouthpiece again.
Her own need to take a breath made Maura gasp. How long had she been holding her breath, and not even noticed? She tried to breathe steadily, slowly.
She looked at the bank statement again, and remembered the tone in the meeting with the branch manager, the one about the loan to re-do the offices she had rented. It was the nerve of him, just assuming he could talk to her like that, more than anything else. He accepted that it was a good location, but wondered if she was not a little over-optimistic in her business plan. The banks never changed. It had been bad luck that Jim had asked her casually whatever had happened to that house out in Foxrock anyway, and she had ended up shouting at him.
He had been shaken by her outburst. He’d muttered something about not being “nobs” or “Foxrock types,” or “keeping up with the Joneses” before withdrawing. Later, conciliatory and tender as he was in bed, he tried to ease things. If she could win the lottery, ha ha, or if she could get money out of the agency. But everything in the agency still got ploughed back– She jumped when the voice came on.
“Yes? Are you that agency crowd?”
“Mr. Rynn, you were looking for people to work for your company, and we kept you waiting a bit by mistake. General labourers, was it?”
“That’s right.”
“How many openings?”
“I’m only starting up, amn’t I? And if I can’t get me workers, how can I get started?”
“Did you say four or five, was it?”
“That’d be a start.”
“A start?”
“What’s this, question time? I don’t know exactly. I can’t predict exactly how many. You don’t know the business, do you? Obviously. All I know right now is there’s no-one wants to work at that that’s born here. That’s why I’m talking to you. Right?”
“But you could save yourself money, if it’s only four or five people. You could find them yourself, maybe?”
“Says who? There’s nobody wants to do it. And them foreign ones are good workers, aren’t they?”
“Seasonal work, is it?”
“Yeah. That’s a good way to look at it. Look: say a friend of mine, say he gets an order of beef for some place – Saudi Arabia or something. I’m not joking, that’s what’s going on now, did you know that? Did you?
”
She said that she didn’t.
“Well, that’s not going to last forever, is it? So he doesn’t know how many months, or how many people exactly. I’m just trying to help a mate out here. He’s fierce busy, you know? Things is really taking off. He says he’ll have to build a new place and all. Right?”
“Well, I’m not sure we’re the right people here.”
“What are you talking about, ‘not sure’? There’s people telling me they already have to go outside the country to get people. I mean, I’m hearing there’s places like yours, they’ll get people in from Yugoslavia and that, if that’s what the factories want.”
“We don’t do much of that, and it’s only skilled trades really.”
“Well, don’t you think you should? I’m telling you. It’s going to be big here, like it is already on the continent. Nobody’s full-time hiring anymore. You pick up the phone, a fella says ‘how many?’ And out they come, to your factory or your greenhouses or whatever – in a van, they’re for the day, or the week, whatever – and they’re gone. No problem, right? Building sites even, the foreman is short so he only wants lads for a couple of days, mixing cement, brickie’s helpers and that.”
She placed her hand flat on her desk and pushed slowly to try and stop her heart racing.
“That’s the future,” he said. “There’s work for these people, and if I’m thinking straight, there’s going to be lots more. Get them in from Mongolia, anywhere. Look, we’d be giving these people a start, that’s my way of thinking, right? Maybe learn a bit of English, see? You have to start somewhere. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“I think so, but Mr. Rynn–”
“What? If the Irish won’t work, I say, give someone else the chance. Here, I’ll bet your outfit hasn’t considered that now, have you? Ah, it’s obvious I’m barking up the wrong tree with yous. I mean I can’t be waiting and explaining here. You don’t know what’s going on out there at all, by the sound of this. Let’s just forget it, there.”
“Mr. Rynn,” she began but stopped, had to clear her throat.
“No. I can tell I’m at the wrong place.”
“I have to pass on a message to you.”
“What message? Look, I’m not interested in ‘a message.’”
Everything rushed up at her then. She almost put the phone down. She squeezed it harder instead, and she opened her eyes again.
“Are you listening?”
She could tell by his voice that he was suspicious now, irritated.
“What? What do you mean? Are you going to give me the brush-off here, what’s your name again? You never told me your name.”
“Maura. Someone wants to meet you, today.”
“Who does? What are you on about?”
“It has to be today. In an hour. She says she has a very important message.”
“She? She who?”
“Eimear Kelly wants to meet you.”
“Eimear who?”
“Eimear Kelly. Declan Kelly’s wife. Garda Declan Kelly.”
She waited for the line to go dead. She looked down at her hand. She had twisted the telephone cord around her finger enough to leave a criss-crossed red weal.
“And what would this person have to tell me?”
“I believe,” she said, pausing to swallow in her throat gone suddenly dry. “I believe she can tell you something that could stop you spending your life in jail.”
“Is that what this person told you, now? And when did she tell you this?”
“She says to meet her, in a pub near Kimmage Cross Roads. She said you’d know it. Come on your own.”
“Who are you? Who put you up to this?”
“A quarter to four.”
“This is a joke? Who the hell is this?”
She held the receiver an inch over the base for several moments, watching it waver as she tried to still her hand. She heard his voice grow louder, he started to curse, she put down the receiver and then she let her forehead down on the desk.
Chapter 22
THEY BROUGHT MINOGUE, AND MALONE, down to Pearse Station. They: a hyperactive detective named Brendan Somebody and an older, untidy-looking sergeant with yellow teeth and a sagging look to him that his moustache did not bolster, one bit. Minogue had already forgotten the sergeant’s first name, twice. He waited with some embarrassment for the chance to hear it from the other Guard, or even Malone. Malone still looked shook. He didn’t offer even the slightest bit of humour that might ease the tension. Minogue saw his hands shake, even under the fidgetiness and finger work, the drumming, the incessant patting Malone kept up to hide the shakes.
The evening had set in. Minogue had felt stupid being driven through the pedestrian area. Stupider still when the driver put on the light to cross four lanes so he could swing around Pearse Street. A taxi man braked hard during this. Minogue didn’t need to be a lip-reading expert.
“Come on up,” said the sergeant when they got off Townsend Street, and the door of the car park closed behind the car. “We’ll be done in no time.”
To Minogue, something in the voice’s inflection came over as a subtle tilt to whimsy. While he conceded that it had probably not been intended at all, he still speculated on the origins of the man’s accent. He couldn’t decide Carlow, Wicklow, or even Wexford behind how the words were spun and set in the air.
“Or do ye want to slip into Mulligan’s there, maybe apply some lotion?”
Minogue offered a tight smile but declined the bogus offer to go to the well-known pub around the corner. He was thinking about the small cloud appearing from the wall above Malone’s head back near Merchant’s Arch, the pulverized mortar thrown out by the bullet, hanging in the air a few moments.
“The Naas Road, you said,” said the sergeant and held open the door. “This fella? ‘George’?”
“If it’s him, yes.”
“And if it wasn’t? Who else would be taking potshots at you two?”
Malone paused to give the sergeant a look.
“You did time here in Pearse Street, I understand, er, Matt?”
“A good long while ago, yes.”
The sergeant nodded, as though in sympathy. Then he rubbed his hands
“A cup of something then?” he asked. “Those statements will be typed up, I mean word-processed, in no time. No time at all.”
Minogue knew that someone, likely the sergeant, would be comparing his with Malone’s before he’d give them a look for corrections in the signing copy.
Inside what passed for a canteen there were four uniforms lazing about. Their patrol gear was strewn on other chairs. A few nods ensued, a non-committal “how’s it going.” Malone started looking for a kettle or something but tipped a cup on the floor. He stood staring at it for a minute.
“I hope you’re not the team’s goalie,” Minogue heard one of the uniforms say.
“Sorry about that,” said Malone.
“How well you might now,” said another. “And it being the most important cup we have here.”
The lush and twisting accent of Clare arrowed straight to Minogue’s brain. He looked over at its issuer, a heavy, ginger-headed loafer sunk into a deep slouch against the wall. He was now observing Minogue with a testy eye.
“You’d better have your prayers said, lads,” he said. “that was Big Joe’s cup you destroyed.”
“Big Joe?”
“Ah now, go aisy on yourself. We don’t want to be frightening you.”
Malone was fetching about for something to sweep up the floor. Minogue filled the kettle.
“Bicycle Joe,” said another Guard. “You don’t want to mess with Bicycle Joe.”
The door opened and a Bean Garda came in. She was hatted and kitted, ready for the streets already. One of the Guards laughed.
“Speak of the divil. Joe, this man’s after destroying your cup.
Lookit.”
Malone turned and nodded.
“Were you the two caught up in that foof
eraw down in the Temple Bar,” she said. “I heard it on the radio downstairs.”
Malone nodded. One by one, the Guards began getting up from the table. There was a loud, long groan from one, and the lazy-eyed Clareman stretched himself and wheezed.
“Clareman, are you?”
“Straight up my spine,” said Minogue, “to the top of my big, thick head.”
“Well, you can break every damn cup in the place so.”
Malone kept at his sweeping. One of the Guards asked if he’d gotten the bruise just now.
Togged up, their walkie talkies tested, the Guards began to file out. The Bean Garda took out rubber gloves to check them and then pocketed them again.
“The times we’re living in,” she said to Minogue.
“Tell me again when you’re Commissioner,” he said.
“The charm just rolling off you,” she said.
“What’s the Bicycle Joe thing, do you mind me asking? If it’s salacious now . . .”
But she laughed.
“Not a bit of it, no. It was a stunt I had to pull one night. Not by design, I can tell you. Me and one of the lads – Mikey Mac here, the Clare Superman you were talking to – we were doing closing times down O Connell Street. Two gorillas came our way, fully intending to do the business. Fierce drunk, and looking for trouble. Mikey Mac and one of them got into a tussle. But the other one was no gentleman, let me tell you. Equal opportunity and all that. So, well . . . I had to throw a bike at him to settle his hash.”
“A bike. How did that turn out?”
“He was a bit surprised. And then I took a leap at him. I pinned him under the bike until the clown car showed up.”
“She pushed the handlebars into a delicate spot on him,” a Guard called out. “Had him saying his prayers right quick – tell the truth, Joanne, you fecking hooligan.”
“Mind yourself,” Minogue said. “We’ll talk again.”
Malone scooped up the pieces of china. The kettle began ticking and soon purring. Minogue walked to the window. It looked out on a lot of barbed wire over the wall that ran along Townsend Street. There were a lot of lights on now, and the sky was beginning to glow.