A Carra King

by John Brady

  “Oh . . . well,” she paused to clear her throat, “it’d be hard to miss him. The Am— you knew that he called himself something else here?”

  “Leyne, I was told. Did that name mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head.

  “How’d he strike you?”

  In the moment their eyes met, Minogue understood that she had picked up on his clumsy phrasing.

  “Well, I only saw him the once. He arrived in asking for Aoife.”

  “‘Aoife’? ‘Ms. Hartnett’? ‘Dr. Hartnett’?”

  “I think he said Doctor.”

  “Was that all then?”

  “Well, yes. I went off to tell Aoife. She was in with Dermot, I think. He stood there, by my desk there, waiting.”

  “Smoking? Say anything?”

  She frowned and scrutinized the hanky she had been twining slowly.

  “But I, well, maybe I’m just putting ideas on it now.”

  “You lost me there,” he said.

  “Ah, maybe after hearing about Aoife, that he was with her.”

  Her lip trembled.

  “An impression you had maybe?” he tried.

  “Maybe I’m not being fair.”

  “Go on, you’re all right. It’s not a statement now. We’re chatting.”

  She looked at the window as though it had some irresistible appeal for her.

  “Well, he, ah — eyes on him — ah, it’s not fair.”

  Minogue waited.

  “Eyeing people,” she said. “Women. His eyes would be on you, you’d feel them. Like, sizing you up. Maybe all the Americans are that way.”

  Minogue looked down at the lists she’d made, the hanky crushed tight in her fist now.

  “Cup of tea?”

  She let out a sigh, sat back and opened her hand. She seemed surprised to find the hanky there.

  “No thanks,” she murmured. “I was told to go home after you’re finished. I’ll pick up Rónan from the minder’s and — ”

  Minogue studied the list for several moments.

  “This message there, you have it under voice mail?”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s just force of habit. I’d take Aoife’s messages off her voice mail and put them on slips. I’m in the habit of dumping them as soon as I have them on paper. The paper version — well, you can see yourself.”

  “It’s just a question mark,” he said.

  “Oh, I know, I know. Don’t talk to me about it. I feel so stupid about it. I remember saying to myself, God, you iijit, how will Aoife even know if she can’t hear the voice herself!

  The things you do!”

  “You say it was a man. Irish?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Heard him before?”

  “It sounded familiar, you know? But like a lot you hear, I suppose every accent . . . Sorry. It’s just a stupid thing.”

  “Ah, you’re all right. Would you recognize it again?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I could try, I suppose.”

  “Do you recall the exact words, the phrasing maybe?”

  “No. But he’d have been bouncing from Aoife’s voice mail. If you wanted to speak to someone in the office itself you’d hit a three.”

  “Is that announced?”

  “It is.”

  “Is the date right?”

  “Definitely. At least I did that part right.”

  Minogue looked up. A kid really, face full of freckles under a red mop.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself now,” he said. “We’ll do the best we can and that’ll be good enough.”

  He returned to the list of her appointments in the days before she left. When he looked up again, tears were rolling down her cheeks.

  “Here, will you change your mind about the tea? Ah, do — come on now.”

  She shook her head.

  “That was Aoife,” she whispered. “Just like what you said.”

  “Not the tea, is it . . .?”

  “No, no. That kind of attitude, that you’re all right. That your best is good enough. That they accept you for what you are. Old-fashioned, maybe.”

  Minogue smiled. He waited.

  “Maybe it’s country people, I don’t know,” she said. “Always the good word for people under her. But she could be so hard on herself . . .! She knew what way I’d come up. With Tony in and out of jail, I thought I’d never get anywhere — and Tony a mechanic making good money until it all went in his . . .”

  “Your husband?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s off in England or somewhere. I got a barring order and all. There’s just me and Rónan now. Things are so bad nowadays. Like they say, ‘giving your baby a shot in the arm . . .’”

  “You think they’re better than the Works?”

  Her brow lifted.

  “What? GOD? You know about them?”

  “Course I do. What do you take me for, a middle-aged culchie Guard?”

  Her eyes twinkled. He kept the put-upon look, but allowed a smile to creep in.

  “They’re the best,” she said. “GOD. They’re real like.”

  She frowned then and her eyes went dully to the papers on the desk.

  “Larry Smith,” she murmured. Minogue tried to hide his surprise.

  “His mob,” she went on. “Tony used to fix cars. . . . Yous probably know more about Larry Smith than I do.”

  “I haven’t had to live with the results of his doings.”

  “Don’t get me wrong — I’m no big fan of the Guards. But I don’t have it in for them either, the way some people have. And if it was a Guard who did away with. . .”

  Her eyes went to the window again.

  “Dublin’s changed, so it is,” she murmured. “Like you wouldn’t believe.” His eyes went from studying her profile and trying to finish her sentence to staring at the window himself now. Where would Iseult and Pat and the baby live? They couldn’t stay in that kippy flat. He wrenched himself back.

  “If you’re ready to lead me through your list there.”

  She seemed equally surprised to be back in the present. He took few notes. He was aware of her watching him write. He let her ramble several times before drawing her back to specifics.

  “She seems to have been a busy person lately.”

  “Oh, she was,” Eileen Brogan said. “Even after she came back from the time off. She always . . .”

  Minogue watched her rubbing more tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “Sorry, I can’t seem to stop it.”

  He stood and walked to the doorway. It was Garland who caught his eye.

  “Where would we get tea, if you please?”

  He turned back, looked around the room when he heard the phone. His own, and he’d forgotten where he’d put it. Eileen Brogan pointed it out to him.

  It was Tony O’Leary: could he phone Tynan’s office from a desk phone. Minogue framed a reply and quickly squelched it. Tynan picked up the phone before the first ring finished.

  “Can you tell me anything, Matt?”

  Minogue waited for a count of three.

  “Hello John,” he said, “and how are you and yours this fine morning?”

  “Excuse me. I have a call waiting, that’s the hurry. Can you talk?”

  “I can. I’m following up on Aoife Hartnett.”

  He turned back to Eileen Brogan.

  “A moment while I get a quiet spot.”

  Eileen Brogan obliged. She closed the door behind her.

  “I’m here in Aoife Hartnett’s office on a follow-up. I think she and Shaughnessy might have been an item.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see a motive yet, even with the background.”

  “Could Shaughnessy have done it?”

  “Without a doubt. But it’s wide open yet.”

  “What else?”

  “She’d taken sick leave not so long ago. She’d been given it.”

  “Impropriety?”

&n
bsp; “The opposite, I’m hearing. Burnout. I’m getting the upstairs, downstairs versions sorted out here.”

  “Is that it so far then?”

  “Well, I’m finding out about culture on the side. Heritage.”

  “Spare me, Matt. What I’d like to know is if you can connect anything. Or where you’re headed with both cases.”

  “Too early. Sorry, but.”

  “Is the PM on her done yet?”

  Minogue found dust in the corner of a window sash. Maybe Malone had the right approach with bouts of bad language.

  “I’ll phone you when I know, John.”

  “She was a higher up. Right?”

  “Yes. Hard-working, a lot of responsibility. Knew her stuff. She mixed, ‘networked’ — all that.”

  “How does she, how did she, connect with Shaughnessy?”

  “Still don’t know,” said Minogue. “Maybe we can put him in her apartment. There’s a team collecting there. An affair, I don’t know. A few things seem to be coming through. They seem to have travelled together. They didn’t want to attract attention, maybe even to the extent of sneaking into Bed & Breakfasts separately.”

  “The lack of stuff coming in from the appeal, is it?”

  Minogue wondered how Tynan knew.

  “I’d be thinking they went to some trouble to avoid people.”

  He heard something rubbing over the mouthpiece at Tynan’s end. Muffled voices in his office. The rubbing stopped.

  “You’re sure?” he heard Tynan say to someone else.

  “Excuse me,” said Tynan then. “Two conversations going here. So I’ll be hearing from you later in the day on this. Even if you’re annoyed.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “No word from James?”

  “No. Am I to pass on a message if he does phone?”

  “You could. We may shortly be getting information that would allow him off the stage here with the media. In relation to Mr. Smith.”

  “Is it solid?”

  “I don’t know. It happened a half-hour ago. This fella has been known awhile but didn’t stand out for any particular reason then.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “It’s not a Guard, that’s what I want you to know. A certain person started asking his barrister some very odd questions today at the Special Criminal Court. He’s facing a third conviction for an armed robbery a few months ago. He’s looking for a soft spot to land on.”

  “Does anyone know about this outside the Guards on the court yet?”

  “No,” said Tynan. “I’ll be phoning an editor in a few minutes. If they’re smart they’ll hold fire on the first article until we get a proper look at this fella.”

  Minogue pushed the top of his Biro harder into the paper and let it go. He didn’t realize how annoyed he had become in the past few moments.

  “So it’ll be okay again to have a few jars and wild blather with our colleagues above in the club?”

  “Was it ever otherwise? Listen, now. There’s something you need to know. This Freeman character phoned me.”

  “Leyne?”

  “Yes. I asked to be kept informed. It’s to be kept quiet, but Leyne had told him to keep me up if anything happened. Very confidential.”

  Minogue looked at a break in the clouds over the south city.

  “You won’t be able to talk to Leyne, Matt.”

  He thought of the grasping of his arm: anything, he’d said. The yellow skin, the scar reaching up to his neck. Had Leyne known?

  “This Freeman character, his pot-boy,” said Tynan. “He phoned. They have Leyne on a machine. The consensus there is that he won’t be coming back to us.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Eileen Brogan looked up from the page at him. Minogue had been thinking of a hospital room. Machines, tubes, wires.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “July,” she said again. “That was the end of that stage. There was a do here, a reception. We went over to Sheehan’s pub after the approval was confirmed.”

  “Then it passed on to the construction phase then, did you say?”

  “Yes. All the approvals were in, I heard.”

  “The exhibition was the launch of the actual building for the centre?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t recall seeing any building work started there,” he said.

  “I only know what I read from typing up letters and minutes and that or what I’d hear. But I did hear her complaining here not too long ago. There was some hold up with one of the tenders for drainage work or something. The County Council there weren’t doing their job fast enough.”

  Her voice began to quiver again.

  “She was so meticulous, so . . . She worked so hard. I’d go at half-five and I’d tell her, Aoife, go home would you, for God’s sake. I’d feel guilty, and me only a clerk typist really.”

  She was trying to stop shivering.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hadn’t realized.”

  “No, no,” she said with an edge to her voice now. “I want to do the best I can here now. For Aoife.”

  She stared at the Biro Minogue turned against his thumb.

  “She wasn’t the kind to talk about home life much. Maybe that’s because she wasn’t married or that. She’d talk about her niece now, or about people she knew.”

  “Did she maybe mention things that were on her mind? Upsetting her?”

  “You asked me that earlier, I know, and I’ve been trying to think. I didn’t know anything about that few weeks she took off until the afternoon before.”

  “You got no impression she resented it?”

  “No. I knew she was tired. She wouldn’t complain and she’d just carry on, but there was something missing. I’d never have asked her. I used to ask myself, well what would Aoife want, like. Me — I’m just, well there’s Rónan and me. Not much room for anything else. No holidays or car, not even a house for God’s sake, but me ma and da are great. They’re my family again, sort of. Since Tony and that. Aoife hadn’t been lucky well in the marriage stakes, I suppose — I thought.”

  “You knew something about that?”

  “Not really,” she replied. “I mean, nobody told me. But I saw her here — right over there, by the window. I knew she’d been crying. This is months ago. And I kind of knew — well there was a feeling — it was a let-down with a fella. I didn’t want to be putting me foot in it. Aoife had her own sort of territory. What would I say?”

  “Reserve, do you mean?”

  “I suppose. Not snobby now or that. The way a good boss is, not trying to be palsy-walsy or that. Some people found her cool because of it, or they were a bit put out by her being so smart and all. I liked that about her. But I felt so bad for her then. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea,’ I remember saying to her. Stupid things you say, you know? She sort of smiled. She knew, I think. That I knew, like. Do you know what I’m saying?” He waited for several moments. She frowned and looked at her hanky.

  “What else did you know of that side of Aoife?”

  “That’s it. There should have been someone for her, that’s what’s been getting to me this last hour, yes.”

  Her eyes went to a corner of the ceiling.

  “What about Dermot Higgins, maybe.”

  “Dermot, here?”

  Minogue nodded. Her lips twitched.

  “Ah no, that wasn’t on. You’d easy fall for him though, wouldn’t you? If you were a girl like. No. Dermot doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Everyone knows.”

  “What, now?”

  “Dermot’s gay.”

  Minogue tried not to let his bewilderment show. Didn’t gay men all have short hair and earrings these days? The giveaway voice and mannerisms?

  “She did say something that day, now,” Eileen Brogan began again. “Now, if only I can remember it. I thought it was a person she was talking about. Her ex maybe, but I didn’t ask. It was like she was making a crack about it, I don’t know, a fish or something. It was something else
though, I suppose.”

  “What did she say, can you remember?”

  Minogue watched her face as she seized on some recollection, met his gaze, then frowned again as she lost it.

  “Oh God, if I could remember it . . . it was just that I thought of it when I said fish. Something that sounded like a sissy. I was thinking to myself what kind of a fish is that, a piranha or something. You’re no sooner at the top of a hill than you’re right back at the bottom again, I think she said. Back where you started. A sissy . . .?”

  She dabbed at her eyes again. Minogue didn’t push it. He began to arrange the pages. He looked over the poster of the Carra Hill. How many people, how many centuries had it taken to make it. The size of the rocks, how could one person — he looked up at her then.

  “Sisyphus?”

  Her eyes widened. She nodded once.

  “That’s what it was, yes. How did you know that?”

  Malone leaned against the doorjamb. Minogue looked down at the files he had scanned already.

  “Well,” said Malone. “Not one of them worth getting a proper statement out of. How do you like that?”

  Minogue sat back.

  “Well respected,” said Malone. “Not a bad word about her. Bit of a workaholic. Is that what you’re getting, too?”

  Minogue nodded. He closed the folder on the pages from the O’Reilly’s booklet about Carra Hill and the stone.

  “Here, that’s the book your woman had down there yesterday,” said Malone.

  “It’s another copy, Tommy.”

  Malone sat on the edge of the desk and looked up at the pictures.

  “What’s that?” said Malone and pointed at one. “It’s like a giant soccer ball there. That big rock.”

  “That’s the Burren.”

  “Who put that big boulder there?”

  “God. Some giant. Finn McCool maybe.”

  “You were there when it happened, were you.”

  “It was always there. The weather did that to it.”

  “Don’t you just want to put the boot to it, like? Give it a little shove, watch it rolling — hey, wait a minute. Haven’t you got a picture of something like that back at the office? That Magoo, Magray . . .?”

  “Magritte,” said Minogue. He’d phone Mairéad O’Reilly.

  “There was something at the place, Tommy.”

  “What? She was strangled, and her car pushed over the cliff, yeah.”