The Going Rate

by John Brady

  She held out her pack of Gitanes.

  “No thank you. Later, when there’s no one looking, maybe.”

  “No later for you today, Your Honour. You got marching orders I hear. Someone hors de combat on a case. The Polish matter.”

  “Just as you say.”

  Eilís’ Munster Irish had revealed to Minogue exquisite nuances of sarcasm and irony that had escaped him before. Kilmartin had always been suspicious of her use of the state’s other official language. He had made irresolute efforts to match her using his own lumpen schoolboy Irish. It had never once been anything but a massacre, of course, and Kilmartin had learned to desist.

  “As we go forward, it becomes necessary to go backward also.”

  He turned his back to the breeze. Mischief rising in him suddenly

  “God almighty, Eilís. That’s a bit dark. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  She drew on her cigarette, ground it underfoot, and then fell into step beside him. She always had an athlete’s easy, ranging walk, Minogue remembered. That observation alone had been enough for him to like her, from the moment they had begun working together so long ago. It, and her unceasing restlessness, signalled to him a kinship, another who might also wonder how and why one was so often an apparent stranger to so much about them.

  “Taking a turn at the old job should brighten things up,” she said to him.

  Peter Igoe spotted him on the way in.

  “So you’re off, Matt,” Igoe said. “‘At the pleasure of the Commissioner.’”

  “God help me so.”

  Igoe raised an eyebrow. Minogue had heard that Igoe’s success in golf was attributed to his ability to provoke and to distract.

  “You’re right, of course. It’s Tuohy you answer to. Technically.”

  Assistant Commissioner Tuohy had come on strong the past few years as Commissioner Tynan’s chosen one.

  “‘No big to-do,’ says Tuohy,” Igoe said. “‘Matt’ll hit the ground running.’”

  Minogue let his gaze drift across the notice board. Dance and Social for the AGSI; training courses in Britain, deadlines highlighted in yellow. The newish daily circulars reminder, the “Have You Seen?” that every Guard in every corner of Ireland was to eyeball daily now.

  “All the joys of Fitzgibbon Street,” said Igoe. “El Paso. But it’s different than when I knew it. I shouldn’t be talking.”

  For several moments, Minogue’s mind roved the night streets around the quays, that lone figure walking from light to light.

  “And wrap it up quick” Igoe called out.

  “As if,” he said.

  He took his time getting to Fitzgibbon Street Garda Station. He crossed over the River Liffey by the Custom House, ignoring the honks when he slowed to peer down the quays where Tadeusz Klos had passed. Soon enough, he was turning around Mountjoy Square.

  It was part of the city he had never liked. He could not get by what he had known of the area when he had first come up to Dublin, with its scarred blocks of flats and its hard-faced inhabitants. Several flowing robes and more brown faces at the corner of North Earl Street drew Minogue’s eye. He was careful not to stare, or, more precisely, not to be seen to be staring. Gardiner Street began its slow ascent and Minogue turned his attention to the budding trees that crowned the summit of the street, behind the railings of the Square.

  He steered into one of the spaces reserved for Garda cars almost directly in front of the station. He checked twice that he had left nothing valuable on show, and then locked the face-plate for the stereo in the boot. Casting a last gaze at the reflections of the clouds running across the gleaming panels, he pressed the remote. He wasn’t much reassured by the wirps from it, and so did it twice again. His new car still looked very vulnerable.

  A poorly cleaned Garda squad car slid in quickly beside him.

  “Shift it, boss,” said a Guard from the passenger seat. “Garda cars only.”

  A lifer, Minogue could see, with sunken cheeks and wavy grey hair. The driver leaned down to see Minogue under the edge of the roof.

  “Wait a minute, you’re what’s his name.”

  “That’s me, all right,” said Minogue.

  The driver eased himself out from behind the wheel. He winked at Minogue.

  “Long as you’re not a social worker–type or something,” he said.

  A shot across the bows from two hard chaws like this wasn’t so much cheek, Minogue knew, or even challenge. It was merely the talk that got Guards through their shifts here in the inner city.

  The driver was still waiting for a reaction. There was something about him that put Minogue in mind of the white pudding that the Minogues had taken off the breakfast menu a decade and more past. Tightly held together, fleshy.

  “Jehovah’s Witness,” Minogue said finally. “How’d you make me so quick?”

  “Nice wheels. New?”

  “It is. And thanks.”

  “You’re Kilmartin, aren’t you? Or wait – you’re the other one?”

  “I’m the other one.”

  The driver was out on the street now. He hitched up his belt.

  “It’s the Polish man, am I right?”

  “You’re in the right job,” said Minogue.

  “Nothing to it. I heard Hughsie got himself taken to the hospital all of a sudden. Appendicitis or something?”

  “Could be,” said Minogue.

  “We did some of the door-to-doors on it. Round one of them, anyway.”

  The driver introduced himself as Dan Ward. There was a cantankerous edge to him, Minogue decided, another copper poisoned by his work, maybe.

  “Enda Callinan,” said the other, shaking Minogue’s hand.

  “‘Enda the world,’” said Ward.

  “Long here at the station, are ye?”

  “At Skanger Central here…?”

  Minogue gave Callinan the eye.

  “Seven year,” said Ward quickly, as though to be first with a reply.

  “Me, four and a bit,” said Callinan. “Hoping for early parole.”

  Callinan thumbed his way through menus on his mobile.

  “It’s that good here is it,” Minogue said.

  A radio transmission came through Ward’s walkie talkie. He turned his lapel to get at the mouthpiece.

  “We are,” he said. “He flew the coop yesterday, she says.”

  He waited for Dispatch to respond.

  “Fella has a go at his missus yesterday morning,” he said to Minogue. “But she only phones in this morning. What do you think about that?”

  Minogue shrugged.

  “Could hardly understand a word she said,” Ward said, his thumb wavering over the button. “They do speak English in Nigeria though, don’t they?”

  “Ten-four Badger One,” Dispatch said. “We’ll just log it, so.”

  “So there,” said Callinan. “Something new every day, they say.”

  “Except it’s not new,” said Ward

  Minogue realized he had little chance with this twosome.

  “So you did door-to-door,” Minogue said, instead. “How did that turn out?”

  “Useless. Am I allowed to say that? Anyway, they’re in the case files, er.”

  “Matt.”

  “‘The Book,’ they call it, right? When it turns to murder?”

  “That it is.”

  “We weren’t the only ones,” said Ward, “there were upwards of a dozen out the first day.”

  “They’ll have to broaden it out no doubt,” said Ward. He spoke as though it had been a serious, unwarranted imposition. “The zones business of theirs.”

  “Unfortunate poor divil,” said Callinan. “Whatever possessed him to wander up here?”

  “More than enough head cases there,” Ward added, almost placidly. “Any day of the week. Day or night. You name it, it’s here.”

  “Is that a fact.”

  “Not so much the numbers,” said Callinan. “It�
��s the types.”

  “All comes down to drugs,” said Ward. “Take a stroll over there, down the lane, and it’s all there: needles, bits of pipes, johnnies…”

  Callinan had slid his mobile into the breast pocket of his tunic and he was giving his partner the eye to go.

  “Social work,” Ward said. He yawned as he shifted the Kevlar vest under his tunic. “That’s the line nowadays, isn’t it.”

  Minogue stood by the duty sergeant’s desk waiting for someone to fetch him. It was quiet enough. A man with his arm in a sling, and bloodshot eyes, was watching him from a seat. He half-heard a Garda trying to explain that a barring order had to be renewed.

  “Psychosomatic,” said the Sergeant and looked up.

  “No doubt,” said Minogue, for lack of any clue.

  “Hughsie, I mean. The stress of it all. Did he tell you?”

  The Sergeant looked like he’d been a runner some years back. “Maybe I wasn’t listening properly.”

  “The wedding. That’s what tipped him over, I reckon.”

  Minogue inspected the Sergeant’s sombre expression. It was hardly laziness that stopped him shaving the errant hairs high up on his cheekbones.

  “A cry for help maybe,” said the Sergeant.

  “Ah now I see,” said Minogue. “Men have feelings now, I hear.”

  The Sergeant beckoned him closer.

  “Hughsie worked like a demon,” he murmured. “Night and day, on this.”

  “Well it certainly shows.”

  “And a top-notch crew above there too, let me tell you.”

  Was the whole station full of comedians, opinionators?

  “And a direct line to the Man Above too,” the Sergeant added. “But don’t let on I said that. Might be offended. But he wouldn’t let on, fair dues to him.”

  “To whom, now?”

  “Wall. A detective above. Very strong on the old religion. Shocking nice fella, don’t get me wrong. But just so’s you know, the cursing and that?”

  “I shouldn’t curse? Well there won’t be much getting done so.”

  The Segreant smiled thinly.

  “The Holy Name,” he said. “You can eff and blind good-oh.”

  He nodded at a younger Garda standing in the doorway beside a photocopier. Minogue followed the Garda up the stairs.

  “Incident room,” said the Guard, stopping by a door with a glass panel that had been covered from the inside. “Or command centre. Call it what you like.”

  Detective Garda Kevin Wall turned in his chair, a squeaky swivel from where he had been consulting something on a computer screen while he conversed on the telephone.

  He slid his hand down the receiver, freeing the other to shake Minogue’s hand and introduce himself.

  “Mossie’s on his way,” he said. “Tomás, that is.”

  Trim, and with a face that said teacher – or maybe priest – sooner than Guard, Wall pointed Minogue to the table where he had placed the casebook, along with two file folders. Behind the table was a monitor with a slowly moving screensaver picture of Zidane headbutting the Italian player.

  “Look around,” he said to Minogue. “I’ll be done here in a minute.”

  Chapter 19

  Bríd had a half cup of coffee in front of her. She didn’t look up but kept writing, her head sideways on her palm.

  “Still at it,” he said. She nodded.

  “Is Aisling asleep?”

  Bríd’s writing slowed, and she wagged the pen from side to side. She seemed to be trying to think what way to phrase something.

  “The usual marathon,” she murmured. “I must have conked out with her.”

  Fanning looked at the sinews that stood out on the back of her hand as her pen sped up again. The sleeve of her T-shirt had rolled up over her upper arm. He saw the outline of her bra strap. Caravaggio, he thought, and Rembrandt, the shadow on the light from the table lamp she preferred to work by. Her T-shirt had shrunk and he saw the small of her back, the channel of her spine pushing against her skin. He stepped closer and began to massage the muscle that stood out over her collarbone.

  She put the pen down slowly and lifted her head and turned to him.

  “Well,” she said.

  “I might be on to something,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes as though to assess him more exactly.

  “The crime story,” he said. “The script.”

  “Your research,” she said.

  Resentment crushed his stirring lust.

  “Yes, a character. Well, a guy who seems to have an inside…”

  “Insight, did you say?”

  “Inside.”

  “You have one already don’t you?”

  “He wasn’t my first choice. I knew he was a gobshite.”

  He tried to read her comments on the paper she was marking. The Irish Monastic System.

  “Well we’re not short on iijits in Dublin.”

  “Well this seems to be more of what I need.”

  “Really.”

  “I think he’s different.”

  “How so.”

  “It’s hard to describe. He sets a tone. Scary guy, perhaps.”

  He saw that now.

  “Perhaps?”

  “Who knows,” he said. Her T-shirt had slid up at the front too.

  “You like that.”

  She didn’t look up, or even pause, when she said it.

  “It’s not exactly ‘like,’” he said. “Come on.”

  “Come on yourself,” she retorted, almost kindly. “You get a kick out of meeting people like him. The more dangerous, the better. A thrill.”

  “No, actually. I am not ‘thrilled’ to meet him.”

  She smiled briefly.

  “It’s nothing to be guilty about.”

  “Did I say I felt guilty?”

  “He’s a criminal though, isn’t he.”

  “Well that’s a funny thing, isn’t it. I actually don’t know.”

  “Hit a tender spot there, did I.”

  The warmth was gone from her voice, he realized.

  “Whatever. The thing is, there’s something about him that you catch on to right away. If you’re careful, I mean. He strikes me as smart. Disciplined or something.”

  “Well that’s a nice change.”

  “He’s not a slob. A careful sort of guy, I think. A planner.”

  She looked down at the papers in front of her.

  “You’re getting a crush on him, are you.”

  “Well maybe I will then.”

  “Is he your run-of-the-mill Dublin gangsta?”

  “I haven’t quite figured out,” he said.

  “How hard could it be? Dis dat dese and dose. Gimme dis, givis dat.”

  “A few times he sounded English, actually. ‘Innit?’ ‘Roight.’”

  “Man of mystery then.”

  She’d go on, he knew, until he’d react.

  “He could deliver on bits that are weak now. The way he talks even.”

  “Grit.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t taking subtle digs at him, he thought.

  “Not that, more weight, sort of. A bit of gravitas, I was going to say, but that would be stupid. I mean, face it, it’s probably criminal, whatever it is.”

  “Your Mista Gangsta.”

  “Okay, I get it. Loud and clear. Thanks.”

  She folded her arms. He imagined her breasts held there just as they would be when she’d lie on him.

  “We’re close,” he said then. “With this story, I know it. It’s not science. But you know it when it shows up.”

  “Aren’t you getting that in with the Guards? You know, go around in a squad car or sit in a session with some of them?”

  “It’s not about them, the Guards. Principally, I mean.”

  Bríd craned her neck and became very still. Fanning listened too. It was people in the other flat.

  Bríd slumped back in the chair. She drew her hair back with both hands. “Aisling was soooo wound up,�
�� she said. “Whatever’s bothering her.”

  “You’re finished are you?” he asked.

  She eyed him. He eyed her back.

  When she had started teaching, he used to make her laugh in that embarrassed way that excited him even more. “If your students could see you now…” but then after a while she had asked him to stop saying it.

  “I’m finished all right. In more ways than one.”

  “Go to bed why don’t you.”

  “Would I actually be sleeping?”

  He was confused again. A sly smile about to break out on her face, or a put-off?

  “Whatever the lady wants,” he said.

  “What this lady wants, can’t be got.”

  “Never hurts to try.”

  “Okay. Aisling’s teething to be magically disappeared, for starters. The iijits in my History class, the one they dumped on me, to know how to spell and to write a sentence, an original sentence. Less marking would be next. Less of a control freak for a principal.”

  “How about: it to be the day before the summer holidays.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Do you remember the desert?” he asked. “The Painted Desert place?”

  She yawned, and nodded, and yawned again.

  “Be nice to do that again.”

  “With Aisling?”

  “Why not?”

  “What would she do while we chalk up hundreds of miles in New Mexico, or whatever?”

  “There are kids in the States, you know.”

  “Oh, a commune?”

  “Come on. It’d be good for her. Remember we always wanted to keep going, not just turn into ‘the parents.’”

  She pulled over another paper.

  “Christ,” she said quietly. “Monastric. He actually wrote that. Monks doing tricks? Gastric, monastic. Spastic. Hello? Spell check, anyone?”

  She pushed it away, looked up at him, and smiled.

  “I got an email from Lizzie. Things are heating up.”

  Lizzie, he thought. The downer sister-in-law, the one without an ounce of talent, doggedly spending years trying to “break into acting.” Her latest diversion was dating a director who had showed promise with a surreal cartoon about Dublin night-life.