Islandbridge

by Brady, John

  Minogue held back from saying any more for the moment. Kilmartin rubbed hard at his eyes.

  “Everything going great,” he muttered. “Deep down you always know there’s something else, though. But you ignore it. You forget about it.”

  He stopped rubbing, and looked at Minogue.

  “Do you know how much I hate what I do every day? My job?”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  “God, I tried and I tried. The golden parachute out of the Squad, the new office and the perks. Everyone telling me how lucky I was – I began to believe them. I wanted to. All this guff about electronics and databases and – and everything. You know what? I couldn’t give a tinker’s curse. And I bet you’re the same, with your Mister Eurocop gig there. I’m right, amn’t I?”

  Maybe Kilmartin and his wife had had a row about money. It had been a sore point years ago, he vaguely remembered. But why? Maura’s business was going great. She could well afford to pay for any decorating and building whims herself. Maybe Kilmartin had had a few jars too many, and something was said, and then it popped. Maybe the pressure had built up too much.

  “Here,” said Kilmartin. “No way, no way are you not having a proper drink. No way – and not on the worst night of my life. Wait and I’ll get you a glass. Wait there!”

  Minogue heard Kilmartin’s leather soles crunch more stuff on the floor going into the hall. Kilmartin was muttering to himself, but Minogue could not make out the words. He took out his phone, and wondered where, or whom, to start calling.

  Chapter 28

  KILMARTIN WAS BACK QUICKER than Minogue h “What’s with the phone? Who are you phoning?” Minogue waited until Kilmartin stood still and looked at him.

  “The truth is, Jim, nobody. I don’t know who I should phone. But you’re in bad shape. What’s Maura’s mobile?”

  “Forget Maura’s mobile, will you!”

  Minogue stared at him.

  “Come on, damn it all now,” said Kilmartin. “Let’s not have a falling-out, for Christ’s sake! What were we talking about anyway? Here, take this.”

  Minogue held the glass but didn’t drink from it.

  “Right,” said Kilmartin, letting himself down with a sigh. “Right – you and Malone, the pair of you. You’re like, I don’t know, magnets or something, yes, magnets for trouble. I mean to say, one day the pair of you saunter into a church, to listen to some scut, what’s his name . . .”

  “Lawless?”

  “Right! Jesus, how could I forget a name like that. Anyway, next day he’s dead. Then, for God’s sake, you find some big lug of a fella you think is connected to someone in the Condon case, and that one turns up dead in a car – this is four hours after he has a run-in with you two, with bullets flying in broad daylight right in the middle of Dublin today! Now how does that happen? Answer me that one if you can.”

  Minogue watched him reach for the whiskey bottle. Halfway to it, Kilmartin stopped and looked across at him again.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s Tynan. He knows; he’s copped on. Oh but he’s a cold, calculating bastard – and I don’t care if his missus is at death’s door with cancer, or whatever. I don’t. I just wish he’d have come to me, and put it straight out. Christ, that would have been bad enough – but not this! He used you, Matt. Tell me the truth now, come on. How did he brief you? What did he tell you?”

  The bottle swayed in Kilmartin’s hand as he held it over the rim of his glass, and it splashed in more whiskey than he was ready for. The neck of the bottle bounced off the rim as Kilmartin tried to correct his hold, but nothing broke.

  “Just to review the Condon case.”

  “My arse for a yarn! Why the hell were you chasing this fella today then? Or after Rynn?”

  Minogue watched Kilmartin take a hurried gulp. He tried to remember when Rynn’s name had come up with Kilmartin, but couldn’t.

  “Well?”

  “You know a lot about this, Jim. Don’t you?”

  “Answer my question!”

  “You’ve been keeping on eye on us, haven’t you. What we’re working on.”

  Kilmartin put his glass down.

  “Are you ready? Do you really want to know who this man is, was? Do you?”

  Minogue nodded. His mind wouldn’t let go of wondering how Kilmartin had come up with Rynn.

  “Okay then. He’s a fella works with Rynn. He came over first two years ago. He’s in and out of the country a lot. Want to know what he does?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Kilmartin moved in over the table, and he held his fist over it.

  “He’s a pimp. That’s what he is.”

  The fist came down, but not with the clumsy force Minogue had expected.

  “He’s a drug importer.”

  Down came the fist again.

  “He moves money around – from Eastern Europe to that other great Irish country where my goddamn son is probably going to spend the rest of his goddamn days, America. This man sells women, rents them. And he beats them if they give him any bother. Now what kind of a man does that?”

  “A criminal, I suppose.”

  “Damned right! He drives a fancy car. He has three or four places he lives in, here and in someplace the arse end of Masi–, Mace–, a place that’s half Greece and half not.”

  “Macedonia?”

  “That’s the one. His parents were mixed in there somehow. Oh yes, this fella likes to move around. He did some kind of national service, and he knows his guns and how to beat the crap out of people. A paratrooper, he was. He’s in and out of places I barely heard of: Sofia, Budapest, or Bucharest. That Moldova place. Christ, when I heard that place, I thought it was a type of a cake or something. Did you know any of this?”

  Minogue watched the hand circle the glass.

  “He talks to these people here in their own language. He is one of those people, do you get it? Rynn brought him in, or let him in, I should say. And he lets Rynn think that Rynn’s the boss, when in actual fact, Rynn is the one who got hired by these people.”

  Minogue took advantage of the pause while Kilmartin lifted his glass.

  “What people?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Matt. The place is overrun with them – the continent anyway, and we’re getting like that. And I’ll tell you something else. When Rynn’s not useful for them here anymore, this fella will get the word and do for Rynn, so’s they can run things the way they want. He’s a Michael, or however they spell Michael over there, Arcacop – Christ, I can’t remember how to say it. George’s his middle name. Now that’s a bit ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You mean he’s not actually Greek?”

  “No! Middle names. Sure amn’t I married to a middle name, for God’s sake?”

  “Jim, I don’t get this– I’m lost here, you have to– ”

  “Eimear Maura,” Kilmartin said, his voice near a shout now. “You iijit! Come on, you knew that for years, I mean we all knew the story there.”

  Minogue tried to remember the year Kilmartin had gotten married.

  “I know what you think,” said Kilmartin. “All these years. I’m not a gobshite, you know. I know what people think, yes I do. ‘Ah, Jim loves to be in the know – a great man for the contacts.’ ‘Ah, Jim’s a divil for the oul gossip, isn’t he.’ Isn’t that it? Come on now.”

  “And you’re good at it,” Minogue said. ‘That’s why you come out on top.”

  “Oh really,” said Kilmartin with a whine in his voice. “Now isn’t that sweet of you. You’re doing a bit of what here, social work, is it? Charity? Counselling? Poor Jim. Jim needs a hug. Jim’s crying his eyes out. Poor oul Jim’s off the rails.”

  The screen saver stopped suddenly and the screen went black. Minogue’s eye lingered on a small orange light that began to pulse slowly under the screeen.

  “No,” Kilmartin declared, and planted his glass hard on the table. “This time, you’d be very goddamned wrong, so you would.”

  His voice was sof
t then when he spoke again.

  “But by Christ, how I wish you could be right. How I wish that now.”

  Minogue did what he always did, dithered. He thought about trying to get Kilmartin out of the house, down to Dun Laoghaire Pier even, or the Strand, to sober him up. He saw him reaching for the bottle again.

  “Don’t, Jim. It’ll just make it worse.”

  Kilmartin’s arm stopped. He looked down at it as though it had unexpectedly disobeyed him. Minogue thought his friend was going to cry, again.

  “No it isn’t,” Kilmartin muttered. “We’re not going back. We’re just not.”

  James Kilmartin was beyond proud, Minogue knew. He was defiant, supreme, a man from a different age. Kilmartin would not be able to face Minogue again for a long, long time after tonight. Maybe never. The loss his mind predicted but his stomach wanted to hold back began to ache hard now.

  Kilmartin threw back a noisy gulp of whiskey.

  “You’re forgetting,” he said. “How do I know all this, right? Didn’t you want to ask me that? Didn’t you?”

  “It’s not important right now,” Minogue said.

  “Oh, is that so, now?”

  “You need a night’s sleep. Can I see Maura before I go . . .?”

  Kilmartin held his glass up and studied its contents.

  “The laughing stock of every Guard now,” he said. “And I never knew. Never! But, sure, who’d ever believe that? Nobody.”

  “I just don’t get it, Jim. I’m missing out on something.”

  “You still don’t get it? Well that’s funny now. Because I don’t get it either.”

  Parts of Kilmartin’s words were getting mashed more and more, Minogue realized. The whiskey would have him asleep now, if only he’d give it the chance.

  “All those years, Matt. All those years. Right under my nose. Who’d believe that? Who, I ask you? Not a one of them, that’s who. I’ll get dragged down with her.”

  “Maura–”

  Kilmartin was suddenly on his feet. His chair bounced off the computer table, and rolled sideways where it settled. The screen glowed alive again.

  “Will you for the love of Christ shut up about that? Maura this, Maura that. You go on, and on, and on about her. Jesus!”

  Kilmartin couldn’t stand steady. Minogue prepared to stand himself.

  “Don’t you get it yet? Didn’t you hear a word I said?”

  Minogue stood slowly.

  Kilmartin had both hands on his head now. He looked like a prisoner-of-war on one of those programs about the war, Minogue thought.

  “It was Maura did all this,” he whispered.

  Kilmartin swung out an arm, and moved it in a slow arc.

  “The house, the Waterford glass all over the kitchen floor. The holidays. The marble in the toilet. The fancy car. Didn’t you ever wonder, didn’t you?”

  “Wonder what?”

  “I mean how could a farmer’s son from the bogs of Mayo ever do this?”

  “Maura’s done great, Jim.”

  Kilmartin looked over at Minogue, and nodded once.

  “It’s Maura,” he said. “Yes. Maura, Maura, Maura.”

  He dropped his arm and stared for a moment at the window.

  “She met him.”

  Minogue took a step away from the table.

  “Rynn?”

  “Yeah, Rynn! ”

  The quiet in the room after Kilmartin’s yell was intense.

  “When did she tell you?”

  “Tonight,” he said, his voice barely a whisper now. “I told her about that fella you and Malone were after. The way I tell her any news, Christ, like I’ve done since the day we got married. The way any couple would. Come on: ‘Any bit of news today, love?’ Thousands of people, millions, ask the same question over the tea table every night. Tell me that’s true or not, isn’t it?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “It was a coincidence – as if there’s such a damned thing. It had to do with work. Rynn’s a ‘businessman’ now, if you please. He was looking to hire people, a type of part-time I-don’t-know-what scam he had going. Meat products or something. Rynn, who should have been under lock and key years ago.”

  “What coincidence, Jim?”

  “We had him back then, for the love of God! Oh, this is ten years ago, yes. Why do I remember it? It was just before the big turnover, the millennium thing – a fella in Serious Crimes, he says, Jim, bejases, we have him now. They were lining him up – we had a sidekick of his was going to do the business, to grass on Rynn – the whole works. But then he disappears. Christ, we used to make a sort of a joke about it. ‘A matter of weeks’ – the fella’s name was Weekes. He never turned up, never.”

  “I wondered how he’s still on the streets,” Minogue said. “Rynn, I mean, if he’s a big wheel.”

  “Oh by Christ, I’m telling you! He got even bigger! He never put one foot wrong after that. We came close a few times, but somehow he was always one step ahead of us. Some . . . how.”

  “Maura talked to you about stuff like this, Jim?”

  Kilmartin gave him a short, disdainful look, and turned away.

  “‘Talked,’” he murmured. “She certainly did ‘talk.’”

  “Why this evening?”

  “She went a bit odd after I told her about your shenanigans. I even think I mentioned Rynn, you know. So she got a funny look to her. I sort of noticed something, but what would I know to say, or to ask?”

  “Jim, stop a minute. Why this talk of Rynn?”

  “So,” Kilmartin said, going on as though Minogue hadn’t spoken. “Out she goes. Where, I do not know. She’s gone down to the shopping centre or something, I thinks to myself. Maybe Cornelscourt, I don’t know.”

  Minogue did not take advantage of the pause. He watched instead, as Kilmartin seemed to gather himself.

  “She’s back inside of an hour. She looks a bit shook, I says to myself, but I says nothing. Why would I? But then she sees me fiddling here at the computer. ‘Any email from Liam?’ No, says I. Then she sees the pictures, you know, bits of them. After I see that thing on the news, I had this feeling – so I calls Paddy, Paddy down at the Bureau, and he eventually ponies up three pictures. The ones you saw there.”

  “He’s still doing that, is he,” Minogue said, the urge to say anything strong now.

  Maybe Maura’s car was in the garage. He could just wander upstairs, with the excuse of using the toilet there.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m with you on this part.”

  “So I’m yapping away, you know the way I go on sometimes. Telling Maura I had a notion this fella might be the self-same fella who had been giving you two such trouble. So she looks at me, right? What’s wrong, says I. Are you poorly? I mean, she looks like she’s going to pass out on me, or something.”

  At that Kilmartin paused again, and took a breath, and glanced over at Minogue.

  “That’s when everything went haywire, Matt,” he said in a whisper.

  “Haywire.”

  “Actually, not right then. I went to the jacks, and when I came back, she had looked on the desktop thing there and she’d seen the pictures. She . . . She . . .”

  Kilmartin pinched his eyes and breathed out several times. Minogue checked again that he had his mobile in his jacket pocket. He tried to get eye contact with Kilmartin.

  “Will you come out a while with me, Jim?”

  “Will you drive me somewhere?”

  “Well, I could, I suppose, but where?”

  “Near to town.”

  “Where?”

  “Not that far. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “I was thinking maybe a little bit of fresh air. Walk the roads here a half an hour?”

  “I’ll bloody drive meself then, won’t I? Then we’ll see who’s going to win, so we will. Oh yes we will.”

  “Jim, you’re too far gone to be doing that.”

  Kilmartin frowned at him.

  “
I’m too far gone? Me? Don’t you get it, Matt? Don’t you get what I’m telling you?”

  Minogue felt the hairs going up on the back of his neck: so this is what a nervous breakdown looked like?

  “We can go out a while, Jim. Would you like that? Just tell Maura we’re going out for a pint. Will you do that?”

  Kilmartin shook his head.

  “Can I tell her then?”

  Again Kilmartin shook his head.

  “She told me things, Matt. You know?”

  Minogue waited.

  “She says he could do it to us now.”

  “Do what, Jim? Who would?”

  Kilmartin’s eyes were wide now. He blinked.

  “Rynn. She told me. She told me everything.”

  Minogue’s mind had gone empty.

  “Rynn,” he said.

  Kilmartin nodded. His eyes were still on Minogue but they had slipped out of focus.

  “She,” he began. “Maura, I mean. Maura met him. It was her husband. Everything got screwed up. She tried to get out, but she couldn’t.”

  Minogue moved slightly, but it didn’t work. Kilmartin’s eyes stayed fixed.

  “She thinks Rynn is gone mad, that he’ll kill anyone. Like that fella. She says . . .”

  With that, the intensity returned to Kilmartin’s eyes.

  “She says, Rynn’s the type would do that, just to be sure.”

  “Do what?”

  “He’d kill everyone, to cover himself. She did it, Matt. Did you know that? She did it. I believe her.”

  “What did she do, Jim?”

  “I never in a million years would have known,” said Kilmartin. “Me who knows everything. Do you believe me? Do you?”

  “Maura, Jim: what did she do?”

  “She– What’s that out there? Out on the road there.”

  Minogue turned to the window. Through the reflected room around him, he saw car lights slide between the gate pillars, and drift slowly down the road until they were swallowed up by the hedges.

  “He’s stopping,” said Kilmartin. “He had his brake lights on. Did you see?”

  Minogue turned back toward Kilmartin.

  “That’s my car parked out there.”

  “It went by,” Kilmartin hissed. “But it stopped up the road.”