by John Brady
Maybe Mr. Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy had seriously pissed off some unemployed, restless, and angry young fellas, men very goddamned fed up of hearing about a booming economy, fed up of watching tourists pulling endless amounts of cash out of their wallets.
Donavan was looking over. He pointed to Shaughnessy’s head.
“This abrasion up here by the right side of the temple,” he said. “That starts at the cheekbone in actual fact.”
Minogue stepped back to the table. Malone, his face tight, followed.
“Falling, you could guess,” Donavan added
Minogue couldn’t see any difference in colors where the skin was scuffed. Hanlon maneuvred around him. Lots of blows says rage, drunken; panic: the basics here.
“How many times was he hit?” he asked Donavan.
“Well now. You have the base of the skull fractured, with bits of it up here. See those little bits on the X ray there on the right?”
Donavan picked up a scalpel and examined the blade.
“We have corresponding scrapes here on the right side of the head as he went down. I would hazard a guess that the first blow sent him to the ground. Defenseless, maybe even mortal. An iron bar?”
Hanlon leaned over the side of the table and snapped three pictures. What hitchhiker would be walking around with an iron bar handy?
“So other blows landed after he went down. Here’s a pattern on the side of the face that backs that up.”
Minogue followed Donavan’s finger. Kevin helped to turn the head.
“But, thing is, there’d be more to it — a collateral fracture even — if he was hit on cement now,” Donavan went on. “Or a roadway. I don’t see, I don’t recognize, gravel or tar here yet.”
Minogue’s mind slipped away again. Shaughnessy opening the boot lid: he’d have heard someone step up behind him? A word, a shout? He hadn’t raised his arm to fend off the blow. Drunk? He looked at the board. Shaughnessy was a hundred eighty-three centimeters. That was just over six feet. Hit hard the first time, Shaughnessy would have gone forward and down at the same time. The spots of blood on the underside of the hatchback looked like the outer edge of a spray pattern, fair enough. It could also be from clumsy, strained efforts to shove Shaughnessy into the boot. Eighty-nine point something kilos, about two hundred pounds: over fourteen stone? Well that’d take lifting. For an instant Minogue saw a pack of teenagers flailing at Shaughnessy.
He looked down at his notebook.
“Can I take photocopies with me today, Pierce?”
“ ’Course you can.”
Donavan looked under his eyebrow from Minogue to Malone and back. Minogue glanced over at his colleague. Malone’s jaw was slack, his tongue was working slowly against the inside of the cheek.
“We’ll go in now,” said Donavan. “Kevin?”
Minogue nodded toward the door. Malone followed him over.
“Follow up on the newspaper thing now instead of waiting,” Minogue said. “Get this fella, the photographer again. O’Hagan, is it?”
Malone nodded.
“If Shaughnessy was on the society pages there’ll be other pictures somewhere. Pinch these photographers if you get waltzed around. Call in uniforms, even. Get Eilis to have the warrants express if we need them. I’d be thinking there’d be other pictures of the same crowd or the same do somewhere in their files.”
“Contact proofs,” said Malone. “That’s what they do first, right?”
“That’s it. And then do a check with the lab again.”
Malone looked up at the clock.
“No great hurry back now,” said Minogue. “But you’re buying dinner today.”
Kevin drew up jars from a cart he had wheeled over and placed six of them beside Shaughnessy’s left arm. Donavan switched on the saw for a test. Minogue became aware of a new ache at the base of his neck. He kept his gaze on the jars. Kevin placed the roll of labels by Donavan’s clipboard and began writing in Shaughnessy’s name and the date. Minogue forced himself to look over Shaughnessy again.
Donavan’s gloves looked very tight. Maybe they were some new type of plastic or rubber. He should really put on glasses himself. The saw might throw up bits of… He watched Donavan draw the scalpel up from Shaughnessy’s pubic hair. The radio began to play a reel. Donavan finished the Y with a sharp flourish. There was a flute and a harp, airy sounds that reminded him of a windy May morning. Kathleen was off tomorrow. Phone Iseult and…
The tissue parted by the rib cage as though it had been unzipped. Minogue held his breath again. It took an effort to keep his feet planted now. He let his eyes out of focus. He was already there, just in time: that turn in the lane by Tully, that sliver of sea off Bray.
Donavan turned the diagram around. Minogue recalled the deft slicing of the liver, the pathologist’s unwavering hand as he held the sample for the jars.
“I can’t tell,” said Donavan. “But it wasn’t more than a couple of hours before the systems shut down. A sizable meal, call it. Do Americans have big appetites?”
Irony? Minogue didn’t know. He squeezed the back of his neck. He looked around the conference room and tried another mouthful of tea. Pretty poor. He eyed his notebook next to the stain from the cup. His writing had definitely changed after Donavan had opened the skull. He remembered fighting against the noise of the saw, wandering through the woods by Carrigologan, stepping around the stones and the long grass in Tully. “Drink?” he had written under INTERNAL.
Malone had found out that both of Shaughnessy“ s parents would be coming over. Geraldine Shaughnessy, the mother and Leyne’s ex, hadn’t remarried. Leyne himself was already on the plane, someone said. It was O’Riordan, Leyne’s old pal in Ireland, who had identified the body at four in the morning. It had been at the joint request of the mother and father. A representative of Leyne had faxed through the confirmation to Tynan’s office this morning.
“The blood alcohol will be done by three or so, I imagine,” said Donavan. “If you have the queue jumped. As per your routine fashion.”
“Thanks, Pierce,” said Minogue. He looked down at his notes again.
“Do you be over Glencree much still?”
“Most Sundays,” said Minogue. “More, now the autumn is here.”
“Do you suffer company?”
Minogue managed a smile.
“Stop off at the house, can’t you. We’ll take the one car up.”
“Do you hear me arguing? Remember me to Kathleen.”
CHAPTER 6
Malone jammed second gear as he sped away from the lights. He accelerated hard on the motorway.
“You know what gets to me?” he said to Minogue. “Like, really gets to me?”
“Tell me, why don’t you.”
“It’s when they’re finished. I swear to God, man. I can take the face being pulled back down; I can. The brain flopping around on the table even.”
Malone glanced over at the inspector.
“It’s when they tie up the bag.”
“The bag,” Minogue said.
“With the stuff inside it. The organs, like? They shove things back in, inside the rib cage. Now that’s what really gets me. Know what I’m saying?”
Nowharamsane. Minogue yawned. He’d been counting: seventeen APF officers on the roster. A couple of hundred staff. Cleaners, baggage handlers, drivers. Maintenance, delivery people, bottle washers. Shop assistants, pilots, stewardesses. Passengers, passengers’ families saying good-bye to passengers. Passengers’ families saying hello to passengers. Sheehy’d need twenty officers to make a dent in this.
“Reminds me of well, you know. The Christmas? A turkey or something. Sick, isn’t it?”
Minogue followed a plane’s approach out over the sea. The plane seemed to hover there over Howth. A holding pattern.
“But you have to hand it to him,” said Malone. “An art. That’s what it is.”
The flaps down, Minogue thought, and the wheels were claws searching for a place to perch. Fif
ty, sixty tons, were they? Jesus. All in the space of a lifetime, this stuff too. Neither his father nor his mother had been inside a plane.
“And the size of the needle, but,” Malone said and began pulling at an eyebrow.
Minogue shifted to get his notebook out. He had the phone open when it rang. It was Tony O’Leary. The family was flying in from the States very shortly.
“It’s Leyne’s jet they’re coming in on,” said O’Leary. “Boss wants to know how you stand on it.”
Minogue looked out at the broken lines of the motorway rushing by them. As if O’Leary didn’t know.
“Strangely enough, Tony, we were on the way to the airport.”
“He’s tied up until after four. He wants you to represent him.”
“Haven’t you phoned Lawlor? He could do that handy enough.”
“Says will you phone him if you can’t.”
Minogue let a few moments go by
“The mother and Leyne, is it?”
“That’s it. Probably a few people with them. Justice is sending Declan King.”
Assistant minister for Justice, King was an ex-Guard turned barrister. King had been dubbed King Declan by Kilmartin in disdainful, edgy regard for King’s talents as the minister’s principal arm-twister for Gardai. An intense pain in the face, Kilmartin avowed.
“And wants you to brief Leyne,” O’Leary added “Within reason.”
The Nissan leaned in hard on the bend. Minogue realized that he was squeezing the phone hard against his ear.
“Give me a minute there, Tony,” he managed, and muffled the receiver.
He turned to Malone.
“Take it handy for the love of God, man. And pull in after the roundabout. We might be changing the menu here.”
He took his hand off the phone.
“Let me see if I have this right, Tony. The commissioner of the Gardai wants me to brief Leyne on a murder investigation that’s hardly gotten started?”
“That’s what he wanted.”
O’Leary must have been holding his breath too.
“Leyne is an American, zillionaire frozen food tycoon and I am a Garda inspector ”
“He says he’ll let you in on the thing soon’s he can.”
“Where do we take him? In town I mean ”
“There’s a press conference set for the Shelbourne Hotel.”
A press conference, Minogue thought. “ I can’t be running around like an iijit, chaperoning some fella,” he said “I have to break this case right away. It’s speed now, at this stage. He knows that I can’t be running around the city like an iijit. Tell him that, will you.”
O’Leary said nothing. Minogue stared at a flattened Coke can in the grass.
“All right, Tony. Where’s himself at the moment anyway?”
“He’s caught up with a task force on criminal assets.”
Minogue rather liked the indignation warming his throat and chest.
“But he’ll definitely be out for the press conference though,” O’Leary said “It can double for your public appeal, if you’re having one ”
“I’ll see him there then. And I have a shopping list.”
“Say the word.”
“Fergal Sheehy’s going to need a dozen officers to get started in earnest. He has five there with him now. Forensics’s still working the site so the van’s staying put. I’ll call you in about fifteen minutes and give you a list.”
“Absolutely.”
Minogue thumbed the end button twice. Absolutely? He watched the airport buildings rise slowly above the hedges as Malone braked for the roundabout.
“Go on in, Tommy. I need to look around. The security office first.”
Malone waited until they had stepped out of the car to ask him.
“What’s O’Leary want?”
“ Cead mile failte for our American friends, Tommy. Lucky I have the spare tin whistle in the boot.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am. Can you sing ‘Danny Boy’?”
“Bollocks’ I get sergeant out of this. Just for agreeing to be here.”
Minogue stepped in front of his colleague. He gave him a hard look.
“All right so. No more playing to the gallery, Tommy. I’m a lot more annoyed than you are. You’ll be staying with Fergal at the airport. I’ll go back into town with the VIPS and head a press conference afterward.”
Malone’s grimace was almost too much for Minogue.
“Just drive. And don’t be making faces at me.”
Fergal Sheehy was perched on the edge of a table littered with printouts and maps of the airport. He nodded at Minogue, returned to squinting at the map. Minogue took off his jacket. The coffee stain was still there. That bucket-arsed shopper with the five hundred shopping bags after the Christmas sales had ambushed him in Bewleys.
“I’ve been looking,” Sheehy said. “There’s holes all over the place.”
“The schedules?”
“The whole thing. Sure, they have video at the terminals but — here, have you been in to the monitoring room yet?”
“No.”
“There’s three areas basically, indoors, approaches to the terminal — that’s the one they pay the most attention to for drive-ups and vehicle bombs. Then there’s a camera over the main entry for traffic flow. That’s it. There’s plans and all the rest of it to get full coverage by the end of next year.”
Sheehy pushed himself up off the table. He nodded down at the maps.
“That car park’s blind. So there.”
Minogue slipped his jacket back on.
“Fergal. I have to sit in on some class of a briefing with the mother and father when they land. Then I’m off to town again. Press conference and appeal.”
“Well that’s very nice for you. Who have I got here?”
“Tommy. I’ll put in the call for staff in a minute.”
“When do you want the powwow?”
“Aim for seven.”
Minogue headed down the hallway that led to the public areas of the terminal. There were five security officers waiting in chairs in the hallway. He took the stairs down to a door which opened onto the arrivals. He looked up at the screens but then remembered Leyne had his own plane. He counted: seven hours flying, more maybe. Plus five, for the time change Leyne and the ex-wife had left Boston four in the morning their time.
He spotted Declan King talking to a ruddy-faced man in a navy suit. King made his way over.
“Matt?”
“Good day to you now, Declan.”
“Kieran Hayes. He works out of CDU.”
Minogue didn’t fight back much against the clamp Hayes issued as a handshake. He took in the ruddy complexion, the well-tended hair, the heavy jaw. “Works out of” meant nothing. Hayes was a cowboy. Minogue wondered if members of the new mob had been given protective duties too.
The latest incarnation of Emergency Response was called The Cobra Squad. Minogue had heard “take down” and “Cobra” in the same sentence at a session in Ryan’s pub a few months back. At first he’d thought they were talking about a film. Someone had told him that this Cobra Squad was to be the latest hammer for paramilitary gangs in the South.
Hayes raised his eyebrows, excused himself. Minogue watched him thread his way through the lineups. He began to pick out the other detectives stationed around the building.
King kept looking around the arrivals hall.
“You’re up and running on this?”
Minogue looked at him.
“I’m only only asking because you can expect Leyne to,” King said “Do you know him, or of him?”
“He’s some class of a tycoon. That much I know.”
“Very direct. Down to earth. He’ll — oh, here we go now.”
Hayes was pointing to a door marked NO ENTRY. Minogue followed King. At the end of a short corridor the inspector found himself in a carpeted room a little smaller than the squad room. In lieu of real windows were two stained-glass panels f
ull of detailed Celtic ornaments. An exit sign hung over the door to the left. An olive carpet, puffy-looking leather sofas, indirect lighting, and low tables.
One of the detectives, a skinny, graying fella with the look of a fox about his profile gave Minogue the nod. Minogue couldn’t remember the name, but he was almost certain that it was the same one who had been front and center in an infamous Irish Times photo of a demonstrator being given a hiding at a Euro summit in Dublin several years ago. Minogue eyed the stained glass and the paneling.
A door opened behind him. The man who came through was a lift from of a movie or a magazine, an American magazine. The eyes flicked around the room, he turned, said hi to King, and left again. Minogue perched on the back of a sofa. King tugged at his jacket, checked his watch.
“He has a tendency to take over,” King said with what might have been a smile. “He may get in your face.”
The door opened again and drew in the stink of cooking and engine oil and rubber. Customs officer, looking very pleased with himself. Minogue couldn’t remember seeing one spruced up to such splendor before. There followed a short, broad-shouldered man, plodding more than walking into the VIP reception area. It’s the pope, was Minogue’s first thought. He almost said as much. Startled, he stared at the lined forehead, the stoop, the jutting jaw. The remains of curly white hair fell halfway down over his ears. Even from across the room Minogue could see the membrane of dried spittle in the corners of Leyne’s mouth.
Behind Leyne, and nearly a head taller, came a woman with rust-colored hair, a pale complexion, and red-rimmed, blue eyes. The cut of the maroon trouser suit Minogue had glimpsed in fashion magazines, but the face was from a winter’s day walk on a country road in the west of Ireland. Forty-eight, he remembered from the paper, and she didn’t take the sunglasses route, it seemed.
A bulky, well-groomed man in his forties followed. He hesitated, his briefcase held tight by his leg, and then stood to Leyne’s right. Principal handler/flunky, Minogue decided. He wondered how many more Leyne had brought with him.