by John Brady
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“Oh don’t try that on me,” she said. “Let me see it, you have a cut there.”
He drew back in the chair.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said evenly. “It’s okay. Thanks.”
She looked up sharply.
“How could it be okay? It’s more than a scrape. What on earth were you at?”
“Nothing, Brid. Nothing.”
Her expression was all too familiar to him now, coming from a place between exasperation and fright.
“If I wasn’t so knackered coming home, I’d have changed, and you wouldn’t be giving me the third degree. I didn’t plan to fall asleep, did I?”
“Can’t you accept that I am worried? What’s so hard about that?”
He was almost glad that his anger had made him alert now.
“Brid. For the love of… Give over a minute, will you? We’re adults, okay?”
“What does that mean? Or should I ask?”
“It means you know the score. I know the score. When did you start to be my mother, or something?”
“Christ, that’s rich. Your mother?”
“Remember? Remember what we were?”
“You’re still drunk. Or something.”
He grasped her forearm, and began to massage it.
“Remember what we said, what we swore to one another? How we wouldn’t end up like, well, my parents? The whole married thing? We’ll live the way we want, not in some prison full of cliches and stupid habits and all that?”
“Dermot. Listen. This is basic.”
“That’s what I’m saying! We don’t give up who we are. We do our thing- you do yours, I do mine. We don’t, you know, do surveillance on one another.”
“This is beginning to sound like ‘open marriage’ stuff, and you know what I think about that. I’m half-expecting to hear ‘bourgeois’ next. Or ‘repressive’ or the like.”
“Really,” he said, and he felt his mood lurch abruptly. Something stung his eyes. He remembered the humiliations of childhood, the sharp resentments that so easily went to tears.
“It’s fine and well to talk about it,” Brid murmured.
“But come on — things change.”
“I know,” he hissed. “I know, love! If anyone knows, I do. Trust me, okay?”
She looked down to where he had stopped massaging. When she spoke again, her voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Jesus, Dermot, I mean…”
She was close to tears herself, he saw.
“Jesus Dermot what?”
“I can’t believe,” she began, pausing to catch a breath. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here this hour of the night — of the morning.”
She looked up at him. He saw the trouble he had caused. He coaxed her toward him and he drew back strands of her hair from in front of her eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Really. We’re fine. We are.”
The nape of her neck was sweaty.
“You’re programmed to worry,” he said to her. “You have to stop sometime.”
“You’ve got so much, Dermot,” she said, and snuggled in tighter. “So much already.”
He said nothing.
“But you can’t be doing this,” she went on, with a soft urgency. “It’s dangerous.”
She paused, and he sensed she was going to lay a big one on him now.
“Dermot? You’re thirty-eight. It matters.”
Before he could say anything, she wiggled and began in a stronger voice.
“Listen, love — remember the one you were going to do, the children of The Rising? 1916?”
He nodded.
“That would be so good,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking about it more and more. So good. Anyone I talk to thinks it’s brilliant.”
He winced. By anyone, she meant fellow teachers. The kiss of death.
“Can you get that going again?” she asked.
“I suppose,” he said. He was certain that he had told her there was zero money for children’s film. Zero.
“And you could leave this crime thing.”
He stopped stroking her neck. She turned to him.
“Dermot?”
“I’m right here.”
“I hate to see you frustrated, love. I just hate it.
All that talent, running up against a brick wall. But this crime thing, it can’t be good. I mean…?”
Her words trailed off. She rested against him again.
“I’m not trying to upset you,” she said then. “I swear. There’s no-one like you, no-one in Dublin — in Ireland — no-one who knows things like you do. The gifts you have. The insight.”
The weariness had come over him in a matter of moments, pressing him deeper into the chair. He felt his thoughts sink too, under some other gravity he knew he couldn’t resist.
“It’s for someone else now, Dermot. Someone else’s racket, this crime stuff. This gang stuff.”
“It’s what people want,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s not like you one bit, for God’s sake. Remember, ‘don’t follow the herd’? And all the killing and the drugs, and all, I mean why make it worse?”
“Make it worse?”
“You know. Come on. Make it look cool. Gangsta rap.”
“Dublin,” he said. “Dublin, Brid.”
“But Dublin’s gone,” she said. “You said so yourself, how everything’s gone inside out. How it could be anyplace now.”
She shook him gently once.
“It’s true, love. Unfortunately.”
Fanning kept his gaze on the base of the lampshade by the door. This was one of those moments, he knew, but he cared nothing about it. All he knew was that something was coming loose, and that he felt things falling away.
He heard Brid say something that included Breen’s name.
“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I would actually like to talk to him. I mean, he knows me.”
“What,” said Fanning. “You’re not serious, are you.”
“Breen?” she retorted. “What’s it to him? If he can’t do it, he knows people who can. It should be no big deal for him to do that.”
“No,” he said.
“If you put your foot down with him, he’ll respect that, Dermot.”
Cully kicking down with his heel, like a grotesque Riverdance move, again and again. The Polish guy unmoving. That scraping sound as his scalp was ground and dragged along the cement of the footpath with each kick. And Cully shifting his stance to stamp again, like he was trying to put out a fire.
Brid sat up, turned, looked at him. She reached out awkwardly for his chest.
“I can hear your heart hammering,” she said. “All the way down to your knees!”
She inclined her face closer to his, as though to break his gaze on the lamp.
There was a spike in his throat, swelling fast.
She grabbed his shoulders.
“God,” she said. Without looking, he knew there was panic in her face now.
“Are you going to be sick again?”
Chapter 42
Minogue looked at his watch again, and glanced across at Wall. Even Wall was fading. Downstairs in the station, there was still plenty of activity. He wondered if the place ever grew quiet.
He sat back, and let his eyes wander up to the clock. Ten minutes off, its hands were almost 180 degrees now: 1:40 a.m.
“What a night,” Wall murmured, and sat back too, stretching his fingers over the keyboard.
“Go on, Ciaran. I’ll finish up.”
“You’re not going to do it all tonight, are you.”
Minogue closed the folder on copies of the preliminary charges for Twomey and Matthews, and he slid it under the one holding the statements from the girls. Twomey, the more belligerent one, had been crying when they brought him down. Matthews was a horse of a different colour, going off quietly enough, a mixture of resignation and
disgust on his face.
“God no, Ciaran. Excuse me.”
“Ah don’t worry. Like I say, it’s one way of praying.”
Minogue was sourly proud of how he held his own against a surge of annoyance at Wall’s condescension.
He saved his work and closed the database.
“There’s no proper reason we can’t go to our homes now,” he said to Wall. “As long as we’re let in at this hour, I suppose.”
Wall smiled.
“I’d nearly be tempted to wake up those kids of mine,” he said. “When I get in. And tell them — the girls anyway — how lucky they are.”
Minogue didn’t get it for several moments.
“Those two young ones,” said Wall, and he shook his head.
“I’ll bet you a pint neither of them will get a wink of sleep tonight. If that’s any consolation.”
“No more than the two lads below in the cells, I suppose.”
Minogue tossed his head lightly in agreement.
“Tell me though, er, Matt. Are we really going to follow through on the interference bit? With the two lads, I mean?”
The imp of spite appeared to Minogue. It was not to be denied.
“The sexual interference, you mean?”
“Yes. That.”
“It’s available. But it’s far from straightforward, obviously. You can see that, right?”
Wall nodded.
“We’d need to know if those two girls are virgins, for one thing.”
He was reasonably sure that he had seen Wall try to conceal a squirm.
“Maybe that’s putting it a bit simplistically though.”
“Yes,” said Wall, and looked at the clock.
“I mean to say, this isn’t Saudi Arabia or somewhere, is it?”
“Saudi Arabia?”
“I was reading that a judge can order virginity tests there. As easy as anything too.”
“Isn’t that interesting.”
“That’d be only for the women though, I daresay.”
The imp was banished. Minogue felt tendrils of shame now.
It was only eight o’clock at night in his son Daithi’s neck of the woods, he remembered. He might as well have a last gawk at email.
Wall was up now, and clearing things off his desk.
“Matt, tell me something, will you?”
It was enough for Minogue to miss a letter in his password. He started again.
“Fire away.”
“You don’t really think these are our people, do you?”
Minogue stopped typing and looked over. Wall had a sympathetic smile.
“You mean…?”
“The foursome tonight.”
“A straight question there. Deserving of a straight answer. But let me ask you first.”
“Well,” said Wall. “I don’t have half the experience you’d have now. I mean to say, all that background in the Squad…”
Still the password was wrong. Minogue checked the Caps button, and retyped the password carefully, pausing after each keystroke.
“You don’t,” said Wall gently. “I can tell.”
It worked. There was mail. Malone, not Daithi?
“Do you?”
Minogue glanced over.
“I don’t, Ciaran. To be honest.”
“I thought you didn’t all right. I remember thinking, ‘well he’s going hard as nails on these two lads, but I have the feeling he’s not convinced.’”
“You were right,” said Minogue.
He turned back to the screen. Malone never used punctuation. His half-arsed rationale — one that had actually made Kilmartin chuckle for a long time after hearing it — was that it was revenge on his First Class teacher, an old biddy who had it in for him.
Forget talking to M? Okay, Minogue remembered, rubbing his eyes, that Murph character. He read it again. Sure enough, Malone was telling him that Murph had been positively identified an hour ago. Minogue checked the time of the email: 10:19. A burned-out car. Seems to have been shot first.
He considered testing Malone’s declaration by trying his mobile, but decided quickly not to. If he knew Malone, this was another episode of a fiercely conscientious copper just slamming the door. It could take a few hours, or even days. Minogue remembered that Malone’s C.O. was understanding. But walk-outs like this were what could surface during the interviews for Sergeant, and Malone knew it.
“You know, Matt, I actually don’t mind,” said Wall. “I sort of let on.”
Minogue turned to him again.
“Which now, Ciaran?”
“Well I’m not going to repeat it.”
Minogue was beyond confused now. Wall’s sympathetic smile returned.
“What you said there. Whatever you read there, it must have gotten your goat something wicked, is all I can say to that.”
Had he been cursing out loud? He was more tired than he knew then.
“It’s a sign, I suppose,” he said to Wall. “Hit the hay.”
Wall folded his arms.
“So we’ll see what a night in custody does to their recall that night,” he said. “And a search of their effects at home?”
“Exactly,” said Minogue.
“And track any extra money they have, or had. No doubt it’d be spent already anyway.”
Minogue nodded. He was finding the drawer for the folders ornery. Wall shuffled over.
“There’s a trick to it,” he said, and jiggled it. “A Hail Mary does it.”
This only speeded up Minogue’s departure. He had been thinking of the tin of Gosser beer in the fridge at home.
Wall was on the stairs behind him.
“I had been meaning to ask you about something,” he said. “But of course, it’d probably be, you know. Off limits?”
“Give it a go anyway.”
“Concerning a friend of yours, a colleague.”
Minogue stopped on the landing.
“Jim Kilmartin,” said Wall.
“Friend,” said Minogue. “Both.”
“Am I stepping on…?”
For a reason that made no sense, Minogue shook his head.
“Good. We’ve been putting out feelers to him. Now you’d hardly know that. But we have.”
“Who has?”
“NightWatch. Have you heard of us?”
A small hint flared but disappeared into the pit of Minogue’s tired brain.
“Started up there a couple of years ago. We decided to go formal. Out of the closet as they say.”
“You’re saying Jim is gay?”
Wall made a teacher’s laugh.
“Oh no, no, no. That’s a good one. I must remember that one.”
Minogue’s anger was rising.
“Ciaran, I have no clue what you’re talking about here now. But you have me jittery. What gives?”
Wall turned serious. He gave Minogue a searching look.
“Jim’s predicament,” he said. “What happened that night.”
Minogue gave him a hard look. Did every damned Guard in Ireland consider it his business to comment on Kilmartin’s folly?
“NightWatch,” he grunted. “Is that like Road Watch, the traffic reports and all?”
“In a sense, Matt, in a sense. It is to guide a traveller home safely.”
“What roads would they be, I wonder.”
Wall hesitated, but Minogue knew he was committed to his message.
“Heaven, basically. Same place we all want to end up.”
Minogue examined Wall’s face.
“The name is from Holy Week,” said Wall. “Kind of good timing I suppose, there with Good Friday just behind us.”
Minogue’s thoughts went to Rachel Tynan. Had she waited until after Good Friday, to leave at Easter instead, a wish for her husband’s future that he might bear her death better? But she was never a “religious” person, was she? He remembered the paintings around the church at Calary, the happy racket from the birds throughout the ceremony, the highland bogs and t
he skies. The right type of holiness, damn it all, the only type worth having.
“Remember Gethsemane?” Wall asked gently. “The apostles falling asleep, not one of them to keep watch with Him? That’s what started it. Only Guards know what Guards go through, Matt. That’s a given. Don’t you think?”
Kilmartin and his Half Three Divils that kept him awake, haunting him with what could have been, should have been. The nights in the hospital, the long awkward frame of James Kilmartin asleep on cushions by his wife’s bed.
“The dark night of the soul,” Minogue muttered.
Wall’s eyes lit up, and his smile returned.
“Exactly. I knew you’d be the sort of a man that’d get it.”
Minogue watched a sleepy Garda pass them in the hall on the way to the toilet. He looked at Wall.
“We might have a word about it tomorrow then?” Wall whispered.
“It’s tomorrow already, Ciaran,” was all he could come up with.
Chapter 43
It had been some time since he had seen Brid crying. He could not remember her crying from pain, ever, even when Aisling was born. He watched her head moving slowly from side to side, her fingers spread through her hair while she rested her elbows on her knees.
“Brid,” he tried again. Her arm shot out, the hand upraised, and then slowly returned to the side of her head. A coldness was coming through him.
“I’ll fix it,” he said. “I will.”
This time she said nothing. The wheezes he had heard from her drawing her breath began to grow softer.
“It’s finished,” he said. “That’s a promise. It’s just…”
“Just what,” she said, but did not raise her head. “It’s always ‘just this’ and ‘just that.’”
“You’ll see it happen. You will.”
She sniffed and rubbed at her nose, and threw her head back, pushing her hair out of her face. Her face was so different, he thought.
“It’s too much,” she whispered. “I can’t do it. I can’t.”
“You know I wouldn’t do anything to let you down, or Aisling down.”
“Dermot,” she said, gathering herself, and dabbing at her nostrils while she looked at the floor. “Dermot. It’s three o’clock in the morning. It can’t possibly make sense, this thing.”