by John Brady
“I’d better, I suppose.”
Tynan arranged his cup and saucer on his plate and stood.
“Phone me direct if you have any hitch in seconding staff.”
Tynan handed him a card.
“A new cell phone number for Tony O’Leary,” Tynan said. “You still have mine?”
Minogue took it. O’Leary was on the move already. He returned the limp wave.
“I’m going to check if it was Tolstoy, you chancer.”
Tynan’s eyebrows inched up, stayed. As close as he’d get to a smile, Minogue knew.
FOUR
Éilis put down her cup. She placed her cigarettes and lighter in the drawer under her keyboard and she looked around the squad room. Like she’d just landed from Jupiter, Minogue thought. Eleven years they’d worked together. The “clerical” didn’t mean anything: she ran the place, not Kilmartin. Her gaze settled on Minogue. Kilmartin had phoned, she told him.
“That’s nice,” Minogue said. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
She resumed her survey of the squad room. Minogue squinted at the power level on the cell phone. Was it faulty, or did it just drop to zero all of a sudden?
“On the head of that rírá at the airport, says he.”
He looked up from the keypad. There was something extra in her voice now.
“And wants you to phone back.”
He nodded. She didn’t look away this time.
“Couldn’t reach you, he says. With that cell phone you have in your hand.”
Minogue cocked an eye at her.
“Says to remind you to think about the on/off switch on the phone. That it’ll make a big difference.”
“Thank you, Éilis.”
She turned away and picked up the phone. Was that a sigh he had heard out of her. A lot of herbal teas lately, shorter hair, fewer smokes. Kilmartin had heard that Éilis was going out with a civil servant, high up in Finance, a Euro-boy.
“Fergal Sheehy’s on holidays,” she said.
“You checked already, did you.”
“But Farrell’s in.”
Minogue knew that the officers he wanted drafted in from the pool had been on the move recently. Plateglass Fergal Sheehy had been transferred to Stolen Vehicles. They were swamped and there had been a dander in the papers about it. Farrell had been in Serious Crimes for six years. He now floated between Drugs and Fraud task forces. Tynan had set up task forces to hit drug dealers when they tried to move their money. Sheehy had gotten in with the Farrell — Jesus Farrell — in part ownership of a racehorse called Stick-Up. The name had been Farrell’s idea. Sheehy maintained it gave the horse a psychological edge.
“Farrell,” said Éilis into the phone. “Tell him Kilmartin.”
Sergeant Eoin Farrell had come by his nickname three years ago after a meticulously planned set-up engineered by himself and the then CO of Serious Crimes aimed at nailing a gang of bank robbers some years ago. The leader of the gang survived being shot several times in an exchange of fire on Móibhi Road only to awaken in a hospital bed with Farrell, his estranged boyhood friend from Rooskey, County Roscommon, watching him. The first two words he uttered then were to instantly cling as the definitive nickname for Farrell.
That wasn’t all, however. A cousin of Farrell’s had gone character witness for the wounded gang leader but the sentence was fifteen years all the same. Kilmartin heard a rumour that Farrell had later met that cousin at a point-to-point horse race some weeks later and gotten into a barney over some words exchanged — set-up and shot-seven-times. The cousin did not press charges after Farrell gave him a hiding, Kilmartin reported, because the cousin claimed not to have known that the gunman had actually opened up with a submachine pistol on a Garda pursuit vehicle.
“Curse of God on it,” Éilis hissed. She had definitely dyed the hair, Minogue decided. Titian, was that the term?
“Voice mail. It’s a damned disgrace, that’s what it is. I hate it.”
“I’ll be attending on the PM, Éilis.”
“Well, who’s the ringmaster here for this, so?”
“John Murtagh. I don’t know who’ll work the airport yet. Fergal, I’d like. Tommy Malone and myself will be pairing up for today at least.”
Éilis nodded at the door to Kilmartin’s office.
“Will you be wanting in there?” she asked. “The extra line, the leather chair?”
Minogue put down the photocopies of the overnight faxes from the States, the Missing Persons press releases. He peered through the blinds at Kilmartin’s office.
James Kilmartin had been as quick to scorn as he’d been to get on the right side of the Euro-junket-consulting-conference carnival that had become mainstays of upper-level positions in the public service. And he’d played the fittings and furniture game shrewdly. New office furniture, made-to-measure suits and requisitions for conference facilities had followed in short order. Kilmartin had made Minogue try out his new leather chair, rabbitting on about ergonomics and invisible stress. The time was long gone, Kilmartin had declared, when the head of the most respected unit in the Gardai had to hang his head when he had VIPs domestic and foreign coming through his offices.
Minogue felt a sneeze coming on. Conducting site-work in the pissings of rain for a few hours last night was hardly conducive to health. He stood very still, his eyes on the blank Triniton at the far end of the conference table in Kilmartin’s office. The sneeze didn’t come.
“Are you storming the palace, is it,” from Éilis. “For the duration, like?”
“No,” he said. “I won’t bother me head. It’s only a holiday, not a coup.”
He trudged back to his own partitioned cubicle. Malone called it the Art Gallery, Kilmartin called it Bedlam, Éilis checked regularly to see if Minogue had put up new Magritte postcards. He dropped the Shaughnessy file on his desk. He didn’t believe Kilmartin’s excuse for not catching the Boston flight this morning. The diversions to Shannon or Manchester would’ve all been swallowed up by now.
There was a section of a newspaper folded on top of the phone. He opened it and turned it around. He barely saw Iseult’s name at the beginning of the first paragraph before a sneeze made him buckle. It hurt. He leaned on the table and waited, his teeth clenched. Damn, was that prostate? Prostrate from the prostate.
He sat up again. It was one of these free papers they gave out, three-quarters advertising. Garden furniture, vacuum cleaners, new kitchens. He didn’t recognize the thing in the picture. It looked kind of like a sausage. Maybe it had been arranged with the harsh lighting to show up the shadows of the barbed wire so sharply. Vicious, really. He wiped his nose. Éilis was standing in the doorway when he turned to sneeze again. John Murtagh had shown up from somewhere too.
“Nice one there,” Murtagh said. “A bit of celebrity there boss.”
“Nice what?”
“This gets delivered around our place,” said Éilis. “Does she know about it?”
Minogue wiped his nose again. He picked up the pages. The Holy Family? He knew Iseult had been working with modelling clay recently. He knew because he’d caught her trying to lift what felt like a hundredweight of the damned stuff up the stairs to her studio. Six months pregnant, up till all hours working on things. Hormones were no excuse.
The Holy Family . . .? The dinner plate looked real. The eggs and rashers and brown bread were close, but they looked a bit dead. But that was probably the idea. Plaster, it must be. Or could it be plasticene — then his eyes locked onto the words: “. . . father a senior officer in the Garda Murder Squad . . .”
He sat back, held the paper away more. There was mention of County Clare in the interview. Holy wells at Barnacarraig; childhood visits to the zoo. Her first Holy Communion; altars and holy picture. Blood and flowers: what the hell was that supposed to mean? He skipped through the paragraph. “Bold . . . startling . . . searing . . .” A quote from a gallery owner that Iseult Minogue was prodigously talented. Family violence, Ireland in turmoil: a p
aean. A paean?
The last paragraph had pregnancy, love, rage. Then there was an admission that people would easily interpret this as a reflection on her own personal history as a woman in Ireland. An artist on fire. Minogue let the paper fall on his desk and he sat back. Christ on the cross.
“That’s the first thing I thought of,” Éilis said.
He had said it aloud? She nodded at the paper.
“There’s that iconography there,” she added. “It’s obvious.”
“What’s obvious?” Murtagh asked.
“Motifs,” said Éilis. “Plain as the nose on your face. See the cross there in the background? Behind the table there?”
“Motives,” Minogue said. “What motives?”
“Motifs, I said.”
“Looks good on you, boss,” said Murtagh. “And the missus, of course.”
The missus, Minogue wondered; the missus will freak.
“It’s the rearing,” Murtagh added.
“Iseult’s going to be famous,” said Éilis.
Minogue looked from Éilis to Murtagh and back. He studied the picture again. A greasy Irish breakfast. The barbed wire, the crucifix. Motifs?
“She makes a point of saying it’s not her,” said Éilis. “Personally, like.”
Minogue let it drop back on to his desk. Murtagh picked it up and whistled.
“Don’t you get it?” Éilis asked again.
“Tell me what to get, Éilis.”
“It’s like that poem, Larkin. ‘Your mom and dad, they — well, have you heard that one? Philip Larkin?”
“He’s dead, but, isn’t he?”
“‘Your mom and dad, they . . . mess you up.’ Do you get it now?”
The call from Kilmartin saved Minogue.
“What,” was Kilmartin’s greeting, “are you bloody paralyzed and you couldn’t use a phone? Too heavy to carry, was it?”
“Forgot, Jim. The battery was low. I must have forgotten to switch it back.”
“Get off the stage,” said Kilmartin. “Flemming lies there! Try again.”
“All right. I turned it off because I don’t like the damned thing.”
“You’re a bollocks, Matt. What use is a cell phone if you won’t use it!”
“I’ll try again. To adapt better.”
“I’ll line you up for a course on it or something. How to relate to it.”
“You’re on holidays, Jim. What do you want?”
“The fella at the airport. He’s ours now, I take it. Who is he? The Yank?”
“Don’t you like holidays, Jim? Give ’em to me if you — ”
“Shag off, will you. You’d only waste them canoodling around dives in the arse end of Paris or something. Who’s the new case, I said.”
Minogue tried to condense it into three sentences.
“Leyne,” said Kilmartin. “He went big with frozen foods first didn’t he? Potatoes, was it? Chips?”
“I think it was.”
“And the whole frozen food thing took off. Yes. What’s the son doing here?”
“A tourist, it looks like.”
“Looking for his roots, was he?”
Minogue waited for Kilmartin to work his way around to asking about Tynan.
“Robbed at the airport? Then murdered?”
“We’re not up on placing him yet.”
“Jesus. ‘Céad Míle Fáilte’ et cetera. How long’s he missing?”
“Six days. We can place him in a B & B in Sligo. He was booked into Jury’s Hotel here, but never showed. Then he didn’t appear for the flight either.”
“He travelled Bed & Breakfast down the country but then he went back to tycoon class when he hit Dublin?”
Minogue’s eyes prickled. He held the phone away. The sneeze didn’t come immediately. He tried squinting at the fluorescent lights with his eyelids half open. Kilmartin was still talking.
“That’s right, Jim,” he tried.
“What time?”
“It was getting on for half-three when I jacked it in at the site.”
“What? He phoned you at half-three this morning?”
“What did you ask me again, Jim?”
“Tynan! I asked you if you’d heard from him lately!”
The sneezes rocked Minogue. Four in a row: he scrambled for paper hankies he hoped he’d kept in the bottom drawer. A final sneeze left him head down, dripping onto a file folder. He let the phone down and swivelled around. He wiped the phone last.
“Mother of God,” said Kilmartin. “That’s dog rough, what you have. But I’ll tell you one thing, we’re all victims of foul play here. You getting pissed at a site last night, me getting the treatment from the Iceman. Eight o’clock this morning for the love of God. The frigging Inquisition. When did he pounce on you?”
“Nine or so.”
“What’s he want to talk to you for? It’s me he’d want to slice and dice.”
Minogue let his eyes wander along the frosted glass wall of his cubicle. He lingered on the black-and-whites of the footprints from the Dun Laoghaire Park murder. Ninety-quid Nike runners, half-burned. His eyes finally settled on the roadmap of Ireland. Sligo. Had Shaughnessy been heading up to Donegal or down to Mayo? Where had the “touring the west of Ireland” bit come from anyway?
“Well, there’s a series being done on the Guards,” he said to Kilmartin. “He said to watch what I say.”
“Talk about the understatement of the frigging century. Are we running a police force or a PR outfit, I hope you asked him. Where did he put in the knife anyway?”
“He got word of some items overheard at the Garda Club.”
Minogue thought he heard the intake of breath in the pause.
“Is that a fact now,” Kilmartin said. “Let me tell you about that. That’s what has dropped us all in it. Hey, did you recognize her there? That bitch, what’s her name . . .?”
The Holy Family, Minogue thought. Iseult on a rant about patriarchy.
“Well she sort of looked familiar but . . .”
“I only got word on this newspaper thing, this profile thing, at one of Tynan’s come-all-yes there a month ago. I mean to say, does anyone actually go for this ra-ra stuff, open-house, relationship shite? Anyone who’s been in the job more than six weeks, like? Anyone with time on the beat? Anyone with a brain bigger than a shagging pea? Anyone smarted than Lawlor trying to feather his nest for promotion?”
The counties had yellow borders. County Sligo was the collar on the teddy bear that was the map of Ireland. Donegal Bay there, then the ocean. He’d never liked Sligo. He didn’t know why really. Maybe it was because it was in the way of getting to Donegal, his real destination on holidays years ago.
“Well?” Kilmartin said again. “Am I tarred with the Smith thing?”
“I don’t know, Jim. Things get around though.”
“Ch-a-rrist! A man can’t voice an opinion without some gobshite hiding in a corner and making a big deal about it! Had she nothing better to do?”
Minogue detached the phone from his ear. Hard to blame Kilmartin really.
“Well, how in the name of Jases did that bitch get into the bloody club in the first place anyway? Answer me that one, if you can! Lawlor brought her, that’s how. It was Tynan started this whole thing, getting the press to play ball — and now look!”
Minogue’s extension buzzer stopped Kilmartin. It was Murtagh.
“A few things coming in,” Murtagh said. “They had Shaughnessy on the news this morning. Woke a few people up. Four phone calls came in to Missing Persons. Donegal, the two of them, one from some place called Falcarragh. A local station. A call from a couple who run a Bed & Breakfast near town.”
“Falcarragh,” Minogue said. “Which days?”
“Early last week, before the Sligo B & B. The other one’s a guest house in Glencolumbkille.”
Glencolumbkille, almost as far west as you could get in Donegal.
“Here’s a wobbler for you,” Murtagh went on. “A call came fr
om the Museum.”
“The Museum, here in Dublin? To do with Shaughnessy?”
“Yep, above in Kildare Street. There’s a Seán Garland phoned. Says he thinks this Shaughnessy came in for a chat awhile ago. Yep, a week or ten days back. He thinks Shaughnessy was asking about something or other. But here’s the thing: he didn’t come in as any Shaughnessy, says Garland. Garland saw the picture in the morning paper. He thinks that your man used the name Leyne. So there.”
Minogue dabbed at his nose and pulled out his photocopy of the Fógra Tóradh notice. Missing person: Patrick L. Shaughnessy. L for Leyne? Why didn’t he know the dead man’s middle name?
“All right, John. Give me a minute here.”
He underlined Glencolumbkille, took his hand off the cell phone’s mouthpiece.
“You’re on the move it sounds like,” Kilmartin said.
“The news this morning seems to’ve stirred the bushes a bit.”
“I won’t keep you — just keep me posted if Tynan goes haywire on this rubbish at the club, do you hear me? While I’m away?”
“To be sure.”
“Write this down, I forgot to give it to you.”
Minogue copied Kilmartin’s son’s address. The Palisades? White flight?
“If anything comes up, in the papers or otherwise,” Kilmartin said. Glencolumbkille, Minogue thought, the strand beyond the folk village there.
“And here’s Brian’s fax number.”
Minogue scribbled it down.
“And his email — “ “It’s all right, I’ll phone if there’s trouble.”
“Here: is it Jamesons with you? Or do you expect Bushmills?”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Oh, and what does Kathleen dab behind the ears, Maura wants to know.”
“Bushmills, too, I think.”
“I bet you don’t even know. You bostún.”
“Chanel number something. A black lid. It’s pricey.”
“What isn’t these days? All right oul son, mind the trams now.”
“Jim?”
“I know, I know — you’re in a hurry. I’ll be off if you’ll let me. What is it?”
Minogue pinched hard at the bridge of his nose. What had possessed him to come up with this question now?