by John Brady
The good life
( Inspector Matt Minogue - 5 )
John Brady
John Brady
The good life
The birth of both the species and of the individual are equally parts of the grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance.
- Charles Darwin
ONE
Gone to hell,” Joey Byrne muttered. His wife was staring at the grass by the water’s edge.
“What,” she said
He studied the broken glass and the flattened balls of tissue at his feet. He’d found another syringe here last week. The dog pulled against the leash and nosed into the long grass. He let his eyes wander back to the neck of a bottle bobbing in the weeds. At least it hadn’t been smashed here on the path. Four, no, five of those condoms today already too. Rings where they were unrolled. Out here by the banks of the canal, here in the middle of the city of Dublin, there were people putting on those things and going at it. Had they no shame?
He sighed and yanked on the leash. The dog lifted its leg. He turned to his wife.
“Come on now, Mary. We’ll be off.”
His wife of seventy-five rose slowly from the bench. He looked back up the canal. Away from the lock the canal’s surface was a mirror. There were no swans this evening. The streetlamps were popping on one by one. God Almighty, he thought, the mess they’d made of Dublin. Poxy yellow lights like a jail, office blocks that belonged in the middle of Arizona. Mary was up at last. She moved stiffly to his side and grabbed his arm. He glanced down at her. The operation last year had aged her ten years. She’d never be back up to par. It had taken them twenty minutes to walk to the canal tonight. He knew because he had timed it.
“God, Joey, I’m stiff as a board. ”
He bit back the words which sprang to his lips. It wasn’t her fault that she needed new hips. But was he himself stuck now, plodding along next to her for the rest of his life? He was seventy-six, by God, but he could leg it out with men half his age. He’d lose that too if he wasn’t careful.
“What’s the hurry, Joey?”
“Now, Timmy!”
No doubt about it: the Jack Russell was the best. You could throw your hat at the rest of them. There wouldn’t be a rat alive within a mile of a Jack Russell’s home.
“Joey! Easy there! I’m not as quick as I was.”
Her hand tightened on his arm. He thought of the times they had made their way down these footpaths, along this stretch of the canal, in all weathers. Fifty years and more. There’d always been courting couples here but it had never been so sleazy, so dirty. He remembered the white rings of the condoms discarded by the path.
“Honestly. Do you ever see the swans here of a summer’s evening any more? Not on your life, I’m telling you. They’re gone too. That’s how smart they are. After eight o’clock, even the swans know the writing’s on the bloody wall here. If only the other animals… Ah, what’s the use.”
She stopped and took a deep breath.
“Those things,” she said. “The rubbers? Is that what you mean?”
He looked down at her. All this smut on the telly: safe sex, etcetera. Was she smiling?
“Do you have to talk like that? Do you?”
She clutched at his arm again. She was breathing hard when they gained the footpath. He looked back down at the water. Mary murmured something between wheezes. There was violet on the canal now. They’d waited until the evening so that the bloody traffic and noise was gone, so as they could take a simple walk down by the canal. Was that asking too much, not to have to put up with chancers coming by looking for a bit of how’s-your-father? Drugs. Something stirred in his stomach and burrowed in behind his ribs. He’d seen them the other day too, with their skirts up around their backsides. Standing there smoking, staring back at him; sneering, bold as brass: brassers.
“Where are the Guards when you need them, I’d like to know. I think they’ve given up, that’s what I think. They don’t care, do they.”
“What Guards?”
The Jack Russell strained at the leash again. He yanked on the strap. The dog stood on its hind legs.
“God and it’s still so hot out,” she said. She pulled on his arm. She was smiling, he saw.
“Joey. Remember you used to go for a swim here? You and Tom and Ernie and the lads. God be with the days. Do you remember?”
He hated her asking questions like that. He could still make out the matte of weeds and scum on the surface. The bark startled him. Timmy had moved between Mary and him. The terrier had planted his front paws on the stone anchors for the railings and was staring at the canal bank. He drew hard on the leash. The dog braced its legs and barked again.
“Now Timmy! Give over.”
He tugged but the dog still pulled back. A rat, he thought. That’s all they needed.
“Come on now, boy. Go after them another day. Come on.”
A car raced past with a thumping sound pouring out its windows. Joey Byrne pulled the dog away from the railings. He didn’t turn to his wife when he spoke.
“Come on, Mary, we’ll be off home. Before the bloody vampires are out in force.”
The detective crouched and drew out a pistol.
“Oh, here we go,” murmured Kilmartin. “Out comes the shooter. About time too.”
The detective was a woman. She was dressed in dark clothes. She had chased the suspect who had shot her partner into a poorly lit alleyway.
“Here, Molly,” said Kilmartin. “What do you think of that?”
Detective Thomas Malone cleared his throat.
“She’s got all the moves,” he said. “I think she’s going to come out of it all right.”
“Matt?”
“He’s up behind that dumpster,” said Minogue. The three policemen watched her inch her way along the wall of the alley, the pistol grasped upright in her hands. A police siren sounded in the middle distance.
“He is not,” said Kilmartin. “It’s too bloody obvious. Isn’t it, Molly?”
Malone glanced at Minogue before answering.
“She’s probably better trained than we are,” he said. “At going up alleys after drug dealers carrying guns, like.”
She sprang away from the wall and took up a shooting stance behind the dumpster. Nothing.
“Told you,” said Kilmartin. “He’s done a bunk. Long gone.”
“Oh, oh,” said Minogue. Kilmartin strained to see what his friend and colleague Inspector Matthew Minogue had spied.
“On the ledge,” said Malone. “He must have climbed up.”
“He did on his arse climb up on any bloody ledge,” snapped Kilmartin. “Sure wasn’t he shot the once already? A fat lot of climbing… Oh, now I see him.”
“She was never trained to look up, I think,” said Minogue.
“Hoi,” Kilmartin called out. “Look out up there-what’s her name?”
“Karen,” said Malone.
“Karen! Look up, for the love of God!”
A shot rang out. A figure fell from the darkness overhead and landed in the dumpster.
“Smooth bit of work there,” said Kilmartin. “Into the bin with the bastard. Nice work, Karen. I thought your goose was cooked.”
“It wasn’t her plugged him,” said Malone. Kilmartin eyed him under a raised eyebrow.
“That a fact now? Well, who was it, if it wasn’t Karen herself?”
“There he is coming down the alley now.”
“Wait a shagging minute,” Kilmartin called out. “That’s the partner who got shot, the fella risked his life to save her! What the hell is he doing there?”
“He was only winged,” said Minogue. “He’s obviously a tough nut. See the arm hanging off hi
m there?”
Kilmartin shook his head.
“Well, seeing is believing, isn’t it? I was sure he was a goner. Gave his all for the female rookie on the job. Karen.”
“Are you okay?” Karen asked her partner. He hadn’t shaved. He was undercover.
“I been better,” he said, and grinned. She tapped him on his good shoulder.
“Hope she has the safety on,” murmured Kilmartin. Malone picked up his glass.
“What’s the story with the gouger in the bin,” he said. A squad car came tearing down the alley. Minogue turned away when the ad for Guinness came on. Malone drained his glass and headed for the toilet. Kilmartin’s face gleamed in the light of the television.
“What kind of weather is this,” he grunted. “Day after day of tropical I-don’t-know-what.”
The three policemen were temporarily truant from a wedding reception for Detective Garda Seamus Hoey, a colleague of theirs on the Murder Squad. To the consternation of many, Hoey had taken a leave of absence several months ago and flown out to Botswana to be with his fiancee Aine. He had stayed for two months helping to build a medical centre in the village where Aine had begun lay missionary work. Amoebic dysentery had floored Aine and Hoey had accompanied her back to Ireland. It had become doubtful whether she’d return to Botswana at all. Hoey had reported to the Inspector that Aine had asked him to marry her. Minogue often wondered if Hoey had told Aine that he had half-heartedly tried to kill himself some months previous to his leave of absence.
That letter which Aine-a woman he hardly knew even yet-had written him from Botswana still puzzled Minogue. She had thanked the Inspector for “all he had done for Seamus and myself.” He took that to mean the bullying he’d done to get Hoey his job back on the Murder Squad.
Kilmartin examined the bottom of his glass. Minogue did not take the hint.
“I thought it was a joke at first,” grunted Kilmartin. “Honest to God.”
“The wedding?”
“Maybe. No, the messing with the drink, I meant. With the no drink, I should say.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it now, but Shea’s a recovering alcoholic.”
“So the likes of me has to pour that stuff in the bowl into me gullet?”
“I don’t know now, James. I rather enjoyed the punch myself.”
“ ‘Punch,’ is it? Fairy piss. Turned me stomach, so it did.”
Minogue looked around the pub. The tables were covered with empty glasses. A girl with yellow and pink hair, a tattoo of a snake on her shoulder and a black tank top was looking at Kilmartin. The man next to her wore a half-dozen ear-rings. His head was shaved bald up to a topknot. Kilmartin returned the woman’s stare for several moments.
“Welcome to civilisation,” he muttered. He waved to the barman and called for drinks. He rubbed his hands and fell to looking at the bottles on the shelves.
“Never been to a dry wedding in me life. Honest to God. Can’t even spell Methodist. As for getting married in a registry office, well… At least Aine gave God a look in.”
Minogue raised an eyebrow.
“I meant the few bits of things she said right after signing the forms,” said Kilmartin. “The ‘God is love’ thing. Of course, she’s deep enough into the religion and all. Missionary, of course. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
He lowered his brow and squinted at Minogue.
“But you and I well know she’ll have her work cut out for her with Hoey-sure he’s a hairy pagan. Your influence, I might add. Oh well, love is blind.”
Minogue eyed the Chief Inspector.
“ ‘God is love,’ ” he said. “Right?”
“Good man,” said Kilmartin. “You’re getting the idea. There’s hope for you yet.”
“And ‘Love is blind.’ Right?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking.”
“Then God is blind. Right?”
Kilmartin gave him a hard look.
“Depend on you to come up with that. You ignorant savage. Hey. That, ah, lump of rock thing you gave Hoey and Aine for a present? Don’t get me wrong now. But, well, what the hell is it exactly?”
“It’s a stone I took from the beach at Fanore. A friend of Iseult’s did the work on it.”
Kilmartin stopped rubbing his eyes and looked at Minogue with a pained expression.
“A stone. Okay. But what’s it supposed to be?”
“Iseult’s friend put the faces on it.”
“Oh. Faces. Sorry.”
“You’re supposed to feel them with your fingers more than just see them.”
Kilmartin’s expression slid into one of happy disdain.
“Is it for the missus to feck at Hoey in their first scrap maybe? Here, do you know how much I paid for that bloody Waterford glass Hoey has on his mantelpiece from this happy day forward? Well, I’ll tell you how much. Eighty-seven quid.”
“A beautiful piece it is, James.”
“You’re not codding, it is. And what do I get? All Hoey had to do was say two simple words, two words normal people use: cash bar. Would that have been such a mortaller?”
The barman planted the drinks on the counter and looked to Kilmartin. The Chief Inspector took out his wallet with a show of great reluctance, eying Minogue all the while.
“A bit slow on the draw there, aren’t you?”
Minogue shrugged and listened to the weather woman relating the prospects of another hot day tomorrow. Kilmartin glared at the barman and held out a tenner.
“Fella beside me’s throwing money around here like a man with no arms.” The barman grinned.
Kilmartin wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Christ. Fallen among thieves, I have. With you, it’s the short arms and the long pockets; with Hoey, it’s the bloody Prohibition all over again. Place is gone to hell, that’s all I can say.”
Minogue swallowed more lager, placed the glass on the counter and licked his lips.
“It’s hard on him, Jim. Hard on Aine too. The drink is a curse.”
Kilmartin grasped his pint of ale and gave Minogue a hard look.
“Huh. Married man now, by God, oh yes! ‘Aine says this’ and ‘Aine says that.’ Lah-dee-dah. More of the usual. Another good man out in the wind.”
Kilmartin took a long draught and patted his stomach. Malone was chatting to a couple sitting at the far end of the bar.
“Will you look at that,” muttered the Chief Inspector. “Molly will probably want the pint I just bought him delivered down the far end of the bloody bar.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be seen in public with two bogmen like us, Jim.”
With careful deliberation, Kilmartin placed his glass on the counter and turned to face Minogue. The Inspector looked away from the weather forecast and returned Kilmartin’s stare.
“You’re sailing a bit close to the wind with that one, mister. Yes, you! Oh, and the face on you like a goat pissing on a bed of nettles! Do you think for one minute that I want to be seen in public with the likes of a Dublin gurrier like Molly there? Do you think I wanted him on staff at all? What damage bloody Tynan didn’t finish doing to the Squad, you did. You and Sometimes shagging Earley.”
Kilmartin grasped his glass, gave an angry flick of his head and downed more ale. Minogue returned to the weather forecast in time to hear mention of high pressure remaining over Ireland.
John Tynan, the new Garda Commissioner whose nickname Kilmartin had lately alternated between Monsignor and Iceman, had reorganised the Murder Squad and its parent Technical Bureau. Kilmartin had fought hard to preserve his fiefdom. Tynan had had several conditions for allowing Kilmartin to keep his Squad intact. The Chief Inspector was to cut permanent staff numbers, and he was to set up an interview board for screening and interviewing applicants to the Squad. With Seamus Hoey gone for a two-week honeymoon, and with court attendance and casework backlogged, Kilmartin had secured an extra position for this year, a ‘floater’ on the Squad. He and Minogue and Sometimes
Earley, an avuncular Inspector from B Division rumoured to be on the fast track to the top, had interviewed from a short list of applicants for that position.
Detective Garda Thomas Malone had been fourth in line. Minogue ascribed the detour in his nose and the close-cropped hair to what was listed in the file as “Sporting Interests”: Tommy Malone was still ranked second in the Garda Boxing Club. A stocky Dubliner with postcard blue eyes and a laconic manner which Minogue sensed was studied rather than natural, Malone had not been Kilmartin’s favourite. Minogue still smiled in recollection of Kilmartin’s aggressive questioning during the interview and the results it had brought him. Why was Malone’s brother in jail, was Kilmartin’s opener. He’d messed up, was Malone’s reply. What experience did the candidate think he could bring to the Squad? Malone had enumerated the record of service and commendations from his file in a tone which suggested to Minogue that he, Malone, knew that Kilmartin had read it. Kilmartin had pressed him again with the same question, altering it only by adding a really and giving Malone a deeper frown. Earley too had almost laughed out loud at the reply. Experience, Malone had replied after a calculated pause. Living with me brother, I suppose. Earley had had difficulty stifling a snigger.
Minogue’s and Barley’s combined votes had produced a black mood in Chief Inspector Kilmartin which buying him three glasses of whiskey after the interviews hadn’t much lightened.
Part of Kilmartin’s stock-in-trade was nicknames and he wasted no time in setting to work on Malone. ‘Molly Malone’ was too easy, he liked to grumble. Kilmartin’s atavistic disdain for Dubliners, their championing of trade unions and their votes for the Labour Party at the expense of the rurally based populist carpetbagger party he, James Kilmartin, had supported all his life, gave birth to a nickname which Minogue thought had the most bite: ‘Voh’ Lay-bah.’ Decades in Dublin had honed Kilmartin’s mimic abilities and he could manage an accomplished delivery in the classic ponderous, nasal Dublin drawl. Malone seemed to be weathering Kilmartin’s sarcasm well.
Kilmartin balanced his glass on his palm.