A Carra ring imm-6

by John Brady

  “To be sure. CI Noonan’s in residence still?”

  “He is, he is. Ye’ll save the barley sandwiches until later on, will ye?”

  “For a while, I’d say.”

  “Six months or so,” said Malone.

  McGurk leaned over the wheel to check traffic by the entrance to the hospital.

  “Bad, was it?”

  “As bad as you’d expect,” Minogue said.

  “The poor woman,” was all McGurk said for the rest of the trip to the station. Minogue noted the frown settling over this affable, overweight rock fan he had taken a liking to. A Romeo, he wondered, charming them into bed with drollery and consideration.

  Noonan had tea ready. He finished a radio exchange with a patrol car about registration numbers on a traveler’s van. He ushered them into his office.

  “There’s a long day’s work done,” he said. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  “It is that. It is.”

  Noonan slid out a sheet of photocopy paper from under a tray.

  “I phoned about the car,” he said. “Here’s a partial list so far. She was in the backseat.”

  “There’s no key in the ignition?” Minogue asked. Noonan shook his head.

  Malone looked over Minogue’s shoulder at the list.

  “A tent, bejases,” he said. “Sleeping bags… no stuff that’d be worth robbing? Didn’t she have a camera or stuff?”

  “No wallets or valuables yet,” said Noonan. “Now isn’t that something. What was the story with the American’s car up in Dublin?”

  “Nothing there either,” muttered Minogue. “No.”

  “There could be stuff down in the rocks there,” said Noonan. “At the bottom of the cliffs. It must have hit a right wallop.”

  Minogue looked up, met his eyes.

  “I daresay. Yes. We’ll need to look into that.”

  Noonan refilled his cup from the teapot.

  “You’ll be wanting to make calls here, is it?”

  Minogue watched Noonan fill his own cup. Bony fingers, sinews: a townie. Minogue tested the chairback and crossed his legs.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Will you release the remains to Dublin for the PM?”

  “I will indeed.”

  “I’ll be wanting the car to be loaded on and sent up too.”

  Noonan nodded. Minogue looked down Noonan’s list again.

  “They had a bad time of getting her out of the car,” Noonan said.

  “Well you’re ahead of us there, er, Tom.”

  “Ah, there was talk. The fellas taking the car in off the boat there.”

  Minogue nodded.

  “Car’s rightly smashed up now after that. A straight drop so far as I can see ”

  “I imagine so,” Minogue agreed.

  “The remains would be, well… sure I suppose it’d be the same as a head-on. Without the seat belts maybe?”

  Noonan looked from Minogue to Malone and back. Malone jiggled his mug and took a mouthful of tea.

  “I’d be obliged for the use of the phone for a while.”

  Noonan sat back and then stood.

  “Fire away. It’s all yours.”

  “We can-”

  “Not a bit of it. Go right ahead and use the office. I’ll be outside there.”

  Minogue took out his notebook and flipped to his telephone list. He looked around Noonan’s office again while he tried to muster his instructions and queries for Murtagh to relay to the teams in Dublin.

  The photos of Shaughnessy at the dos, the call-ins from Donegal needed mining properly. He lingered on the wood-framed photo of the group by a door somewhere. Noonan’s broad smile, the uniform, sergeant’s stripes on the ceremonial gray uniform. The hair looked wispy and soon to be departed even then. Ten years ago maybe? Minogue fingered the number for the Castlebar Garda station from the photocopy he taped into each of his notebooks. He turned the phone around and found a line out.

  “I’ll try Castlebar, Tommy. See if there’s anything from the Micra before they wrap it.”

  A Sergeant Gerry Murphy handled scenes of the crimes. He had bagged the loose items and wrapped the car again.

  “Thanks very much, now. Do ye have transport for it to the state lab up in Dublin?”

  Murphy replied that they did indeed. Had he time to go over a preliminary with Minogue? He did.

  Minogue added to the list Noonan had given him. Accordioned: was that now a technical term? Passenger compartment had been severely crushed. All seats out of their anchors. Anchors, Minogue wondered. Roof down at the front. Impact seems to have been on the bonnet, shared with the edge of the roof. The weight at the front, Murphy tried to explain. Minogue drew what he hoped looked like a hatchback. It had gone over nose first then? Most likely forward, yes. A bit of momentum seems to have carried it over the ninety degrees as it fell. Maps, carry-all bags with clothes, a rucksack, women’s shoes. He waited for a pause before interrupting.

  “Still no effects, Gerry? Handbag?”

  “None, no.”

  “How much have ye done?”

  “Well, we’ve emptied the car in actual fact.”

  “The boot too?”

  “We have.”

  Minogue looked down the list again.

  “Is there something we should be maybe have an eye out for, er, Inspector?”

  It wasn’t sarcasm, Minogue realized. He breathed out and rubbed at his eyes.

  “Bits of string,” he said. “A rope maybe?”

  “No sign.”

  “Ashtrays?”

  The dashboard had been shattered but the ashtray had stayed in place There had been a gap and the water had worked in. Some fibers from the filters floating free had been bagged for the lab.

  “I’m surprised there’s not more. Stuff belonging to a man — shoes, clothes?”

  “No,” said Murphy “Not yet identified, I’d better say, I suppose.”

  Had he come across that pushy, Minogue wondered.

  “We’re not playing paper chase here now, Gerry. Say what’s on your mind.”

  “Well,” Murphy said. “We don’t want to make a slip here now, being as, well, it’s tied in with the thing up in Dublin. The American?”

  How could they not know, Minogue heard the voice mock him within, Murphy and Noonan and McGurk and half the bloody country, and it on the radio and telly?

  “It’s a tin opener you’d be needing to get at some bits,” Murphy added.

  Pushed up that track, Minogue wondered. Shoved off with another car? The keys could be anywhere off the cliffs too.

  “The ignition was definitely off?” Minogue tried. “No bit of broken-off key?”

  “No. We have the steering column in one piece.”

  Minogue let his Biro drop on the paper. He had drawn a box with a circle inside, and another box inside the circle. Put Shaughnessy in the damn car for us, he heard the voice again: that’s all we want. Make one thing easy for us today, for the love of God. He looked down the list again.

  “Rubbish in the car, Gerry? Tins of Coke or that?”

  “Pepsi, actually. Two empties, one torn up in bits — by hand. You know the way people do it with the aluminium ones?”

  “Not from the smash?”

  “No. Peeled, one of them.”

  “Pepsi,” Minogue said aloud. Malone looked over and raised his eyebrows. A sign of nerves, the shredding of a can during a row, to keep the hands busy?

  “I wonder what we could lift off them after a few days of seawater…”

  “Depends,” Murphy said. “Ask Eimear above at the lab in Dublin. Alkaline deposits and brine… could be. They’re bagged and ready to go to the lab in anyhow ”

  As in don’t be asking things we can’t deliver. Minogue wondered if he had missed other hints earlier. He thanked Murphy and remembered to ask for his phone number again.

  McGurk was sitting at a desk by the door to the public office of the Garda Station pretending to work. Minogue paused in the doorway. Noonan again
told him it’d be no bother to set him up in the Western Hotel.

  “Thanks, now, but we’ll go along tonight as soon as we have the items from the car and the remains.”

  Noonan looked skeptical. Minogue couldn’t tell if it was annoyance.

  “Sure there’s expertise already over the site now,” Minogue added. And ye’re doing a first-class job of it over at the Fields.”

  “An oul newspaper,” said Noonan. “Cigarette packages That’s not much.”

  “You have a driver who’ll do the run to Dublin tonight?”

  “I do,” said Noonan, and made a shy smile. “Beamish, the undertaker, will do it. ‘There are no complaints about Beamish,’ as they say. Will you take a lift with him?”

  Minogue didn’t know, as he thought about it later, if he’d done it for a dare, or because Noonan had said the driver was fast and knew the routine. Malone muttered something about the culchies looking for a chance to slag them, sending them back to Dublin in a hearse. Minogue shrugged that off.

  McGurk led them out to the yard There was a break in the clouds to the west and beams of light had broken through in the distance. The air had gone cooler. Malone still had no appetite.

  “A bit of cake before we hit the trail,” said Minogue. “And brewed coffee?”

  McGurk piloted them to the Western Hotel. Vivaldi was playing in the foyer. They sat at a table across from the reception desk. Malone walked around, stopping to eye the goings-on in the street outside. Then he went wandering.

  McGurk ordered a piece of cheesecake. He asked Minogue about prices in Dublin: the pictures, a dinner for two — not an all-out type dinner now, just a good one — a flat in Donnybrook. Minogue almost smiled. McGurk had heard there were new nightclubs in Dublin, really quite the thing. Had the inspector heard of them.

  Minogue was about to try an answer he’d heard from gossip with Eilis and John Murtagh about prostitutes setting up in those new apartments when Malone reappeared from the lounge. He flicked his head toward the doorway. Minogue followed him into the lounge.

  There were a half-dozen men at the bar, some couples at tables. The television was high over the bar, ignored. Beside Kilmartin’s face were some kinds of charts. Another one slid out. Direct quotes and the date prominent — “no developments in the case. ” Four months ago Larry Smith’s brother walking with his widow down a Dublin street. Another clip of a taped scene: the sheet over Smith out in Baldoyle with the blood from his pulped head soaked in. Minogue caught a glimpse of his own back and the bald spot Kathleen had taken to tickling after a few jars had made her frisky, as he stood with Kilmartin by the sheet.

  The news reader reappeared. Gemma O’Loughlin’s name, a columnist with the Irish Times. Papers turned over, the next item the camera slid left: a European Union meeting of agriculture ministers.

  “Shite, meet fan,” said Malone.

  “What did I miss?” Minogue asked.

  Malone looked around.

  ‘“Allegations of a cover up,’” he said. “And Christy Smith sitting there with Larry’s wife. He has a leg up on her, I heard. Tough talk ‘Hold them responsible. ’ Finger pointing. ‘Public inquiry.’ Shite like that.”

  “Names mentioned?”

  “No, I didn’t hear them. They mentioned the squad all right. But no names ‘Senior Gardai’ aware of it, it said.”

  Minogue made his way back to the doorway into the foyer.

  “Any reply from us?”

  “Something about Garda sources denying it. And saying that we’d been bollocked by the family when we’d gone looking for clues anyway. Jases, the nerve.”

  The coffee had been too good probably. Minogue adjusted the seat belt again. Malone sat woodenly in the middle next to the driver, O’Callaghan.

  He looked over his shoulder several times through the tinted glass. Their carryalls and evidence bags weren’t moving around.

  Minogue looked at the air-conditioning controls again. O’Callaghan noticed, started an explanation. The thermostat was always set low, he said There was no need for it to tell you the God’s honest truth. But people wanted to know you had it. Why? They’d heard about it, that was all.

  He’d made the Dublin run before, but not in this direction. A lot of people living in Dublin even fifty years wanted to be buried at home. Home sweet home. Or people coming in from the States. There was a man of ninety-seven flown home from Los Angeles to be buried and two fellas from a funeral director’s there came with the remains, if you don’t mind. The money involved? No place like home. First thing they looked for, would you believe it, was an air-conditioned hearse.

  It was dark by Foxford. The roads were dry here. Did they mind if he smoked, O’Callaghan asked. Minogue hadn’t the heart to refuse. Swinford, eight miles. The inspector looked down at the clock. They’d be lucky to be back in Dublin by eleven. A signpost by the bridge over the River Moy sped by. Fishing, he thought, there’s a thought. Couldn’t you read and fish at the same time? O’Callaghan smoked heavily, savoring it. The smoke was yanked out the sliver of window by O’Callaghan’s ear into the dark wake of the car.

  What the hell did Shaughnessy get himself into here? Minogue listened to the changing notes of the wind from the window. Eist le fuaim na habhainn, mar gheobhiadh tu bradan: If you want to catch a salmon, you listen to the river. He’d phone Kathleen from Longford. A pint with Malone at Ryan’s by closing time.

  “Will you make it to Dublin before eleven?” he murmured.

  No bother, from O’Callaghan. Something in the brash assurance told the inspector that he knew the reason the question, that he wouldn’t mind being included in the arrangement for the pint. Strange isn’t it, he began to talk in a monotone, how people are about certain things. Minogue rested his head on the headrest and leaned harder against the door. How people wanted to be buried and where. Tells you a lot about people, doesn’t it? I suppose, from Minogue, a maybe, from Malone. O’Callaghan warmed to his subject

  Minogue watched the speedometer stay steady on one hundred. He wondered how well O’Callaghan knew the roads. He looked out at the dark shapes falling behind the headlights’ glow. Not three feet behind him, through the glass, in a chilly space being driven through the Mayo night was the body of Aoife Hartnett.

  O’Callaghan was beginning to annoy him seriously. Home, he was saying, sure home is only where you come from these days. And that’s about it, wouldn’t you say? Malone said he didn’t know. The States, Europe, said O’Callaghan, we were only catching up. Mobility is the future. God knows where we’ll end up with that stuff, hah? They’d have computers the size of a book soon and you could talk into them. Minogue let his eyes close. The monologue moved to cars.

  Minutes passed. He had to talk to Mrs Shaughnessy. She must know something of the son’s recent shenanigans, for God’s sake. He thought of the tracks out over the bog, the one that led to the cliff where Aoife Hartnett’s car had plummeted to the rocks and water below. Bog holes, ponds, loughs of water even. But that track had been passable. Who’d know that? Noonan’s reply last night on the phone — you’d get a car up there maybe but you wouldn’t get it back down again too easy.

  “Plane?” said O’Callaghan again. “From Dublin down to Knock Airport?”

  “Right,” said Malone. “A plane.”

  “And now ye’re heading back in a hearse. A howl or what?”

  Malone didn’t answer. Did they mind him turning on the radio, he asked instead. Minogue opened his eyes anything, anything. Malone found a live chat show from Galway The question was: Had GOD sold out to the recording industry? A caller argued that women were still treated like shite in the rock industry and GOD had definitely sold out. She’d never listen to GOD again. Ever. Were they allowed to say words like shite on the radio now, Minogue wondered. O’Callaghan had to stop for a leak and a package of cigarettes. Did they want anything? Fishing about to see if they’d frown on having a few pints.

  “The blather out of him,” said Malone. “Be better o
ff in the back with her.”

  Minogue fiddled with the radio Not a gig out of it until the key was in.

  “I can’t figure it out,” muttered Malone. “What am I missing here?”

  “Who drove the car,” said Minogue and yawned. “That’s the key here now.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  Malone turned to face him.

  “I can see them driving out there,” he said. “I can even see them — or him or her or whoever — driving up that track a bit. Why? To keep the car out of sight, say. They don’t want people knowing they’re around. Why? She’s dead already? He plans or they plan to dump the car somewhere ’cause he doesn’t want to be spotted on the road. I mean it sort of fits, being as what we’re seeing people who kept off the beaten track on purpose.”

  “They had a tent, say.”

  “Well, yeah. But would you actually want to rough it out here? The bleeding rain and everything?”

  Minogue surveyed the dashboard again. Blaupunkt, electric windows; the climate controls for the back: invincible. Who won the war again?

  “Was she the outdoor type? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Him?”

  “Don’t know, Tommy. We’ll have to get better background. You’re right.”

  “She was done there though. Yeah?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “You think he raped her? That was it?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Minogue said.

  “Huh. How does he get out of there and wind up in Dublin, then? Unless he’s dead too, with her. A double. But who’d kill the two of ’em, then take him off to Dublin in a car? Unless he’s an outsider himself, heading out of the country too ”

  “This third party,” said Minogue. “What’s the point of trying to bring Shaughnessy back to Dublin?”

  “Okay: he’s alive then, say. Kidnapped.”

  “No. There’s no sign of that, Tommy. Notes, calls. No PM signs.”

  “Okay. He’s in cahoots with someone they meet on the road. Another Yank, say?”

  “That’s open, yes.”

  “But we can’t even start on that until we get to place him — them, I mean. Or get through all the airline and boat lists. Back to Shaughnessy being the killer. Unless he’s Mister Cool, he’s out there in the bog freaking out entirely. Yeah?”