by John Brady
Murtagh met them inside the front door. He fell into step beside Minogue.
“Any word, John? Bag? Witness?”
Murtagh shook his head.
“They wanted to start the PM in half an hour. Which one’s the mother?”
Minogue glanced back at the two women.
“On the left. Can’t read her much yet.”
Minogue had pieced together some things from the few words Irene Lawlor had let slip, often mere monosyllables which she seemed to wish to, but couldn’t summon the will, to prevent the garrulous Mrs. Molloy from detailing. Where did Mary live? Inishowen Gardens, off the South Circular Road. Shared a flat with another girl. When had she last seen Mary? April sometime. Didn’t get on so great the last while. Phoned the odd time though. Recently? Couple of weeks back; forgot which day. Had she seemed worried? No. Money troubles maybe? Didn’t mention any. Boyfriend? Didn’t know. Mary worked in the city centre. Some hairdresser’s, as far as she knew. As far as she knew: the phrase kept cropping up. Had Mary any contact with her estranged father? Didn’t want to have any. He’d gone on the dry a couple of years back. Where was he? Didn’t know. Somewhere in Ballybough, she’d heard. Did he contact her? He’d come by the house a half a dozen times before he finally took the hint. Asking to see Mary. Did he say what for? Wanted to make up with her, she supposed. Mary didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d gotten Jesus or something because it helped him dry out. Mary had told her a while back, last year maybe, that her father had tried to talk to her a few times on the street. He’d seen her and him driving by in his taxi. She told him to get lost. To drop dead. She hated him. Irene Lawlor hated him too. Did she know or had she maybe heard anything about Mary lately, anything that suggested things were not going well? It was the only time Minogue remembered Irene Lawlor taking her eyes from the passing roadway and looking at him. Mrs. Molloy with her big mouth broke that one up. What sort of trouble, she’d asked, and Irene Lawlor turned back toward the open window.
Minogue took Malone aside.
“You go with John too, Tommy. Take it handy with them. Gentle, no matter how they react.”
“What am I supposed to say, like?”
“Don’t say anything if you’re not sure. The attendant will pull back the covering as far as the chin. John’ll ask them. Okay?”
Minogue stepped over to the two women. Mrs. Molloy’s face had lost all its pink now. Her arm was twined tight around Irene Lawlor’s.
“Mrs. Lawlor. Detective Malone will escort you along with Detective Murtagh here.”
He cleared his throat.
“You don’t actually need to follow through here. We’ve already identified Mary from our end. Any time you want to change your mind now…”
Irene Lawlor’s words came from between her teeth.
“I know what they do here,” she said. “I want to see her.”
“No Jack Mullen,” announced Eilis. Minogue heard her type something else in. The phone was greasy in his hand. Minogue looked up from the page in his notebook where he had listed the points. Jack (John) Mullen-father. Mary in London. Egans, the gang.
“Doyle was looking for you,” she said, still typing. “Returning a call about her.”
“I’ll phone him in a minute. You’re sure about this Jack Mullen?”
“Nothing. He’s clean.”
“All right,” said Minogue. “I’ll try his place one more time, then we’ll go after the taxi companies. Capitol Taxis, the missus thinks. Ex-missus.”
Minogue switched the phone back to stand-by.
“Nothing on Mary Mullen’s da, Tommy. I’ll see what Doyler has.”
“Darlin’ Doyle? Prostitution?”
Minogue nodded.
Malone turned onto Dorset Street. The sun fell on Minogue’s side now. He was left on hold for over a minute before he heard Doyle’s voice.
“Morning there, John. Matt Minogue, yes. Have you anything to update the file on this girl Mary Mullen?”
“I’m afraid not. She hasn’t figured with us here since her last conviction there three years ago. Left the canal trade or maybe got sense.”
“Well, now that I have you, maybe you can smarten me up on things. I was wondering if, say, some of the trade down at the canal is done independently, like. Girls on their own, I mean. What are the chances she got the treatment from someone for not paying her way there?”
“Well, we’d probably get to hear about one in, God, I don’t know, one in twenty of that. Unless a pimp is beating the head off one of the girls in broad daylight.”
“But she could be there for some time and ye wouldn’t know her?”
Doyle didn’t reply for several moments.
“Well, now, you said it. As regards pimps now, we break up stuff by the canal pretty regularly. But it’s gotten right tough to make charges stick. The sting has to be good. Depending on things, Harcourt Terrace and Donnybrook stations take turns at cleaning up the trade. You always get gougers and girls moving through the area though. Girls doing business there very irregular, like. They might do a few tricks one night and that’d be all. Be gone in a few hours with a hundred quid in their pockets. But you’d see a lot of the faces turning up there again and again. Users who need more and more cash to feed the habit or pay off debts from their dealer.”
“The dealer and the pimp could be one and the same thing then?”
“Right, Matt. Pimps often double as pushers. Some of them feed the girls, see? But there are girls out there solo.”
“How about a crowd called the Egans? Do you know them in your line of business?”
“Does the Pope fall to his knees of a Sunday? But this is not their big thing though, is it? Unless they’ve changed. They’re more into the organized crime, I believe. Drugs, moving cars around, fences, all that. Protection rackets and stuff too. That falls more to Serious Crimes really. There’s, em, a gale of work being done on that very outfit lately, I believe.”
Code for go ask the Serious Crime Squad, Minogue registered.
“Well. Thanks now, John, I suppose.”
“Sorry and all but. I just haven’t had anyone finger them directly in the trade yet-but here, wait a minute. I’ll give you the name of someone who runs a drop-in centre up near the canal. For girls on the street, addicts and so on. Sister Joe, do you know her?”
Minogue didn’t.
“She might know more. She’s a nun. Here’s her number.”
Minogue scribbled it in his notebook and hung up.
“File on Mary is all we seem to have, Tommy,” he muttered. “Doyler and company don’t know her since then.”
Malone opened his hands on the steering wheel and shrugged. Minogue returned to watching the passing doorways.
“Didn’t expect the mother to talk afterwards,” said Malone. “Did you?”
“Maybe she didn’t believe us. Didn’t want to believe us.”
“Wonder what Mary was really up to the time she was in England though.”
Minogue looked down at the notebook again.
“Hairdressing course, beautician stuff. Well, we can check.”
Minogue looked at his watch.
“So we all get together?”
“To be sure, Tommy. Statements, leads, progress reports. Collate, exchange, talk. Drink tea. Evidence, rumours, leads. Dreams you had, even. It’s too early for any tight forensic. Depending on how I divide the job, we’ll split into teams. And that can change in an hour too. We pull in who and what we need from CDU and stations.”
“What about Mary’s place? I mean, what happens with that?”
“The gas company, the ESB or someone may have an exact, Eilis has put through a call to the local station too. When we have the number of the place, a station patrol car will go out and keep it for us. Then it’s up to you and me, when we’ve accounted for ourselves back at the ranch. The meeting probably won’t take more than half an hour. Get a cup of coff-”
The trill startled him. He picked up the phon
e off the floor. Kilmartin asked him where he was.
“Five minutes, Jim. Start without us.”
“Stay away,” said Kilmartin. “You have work to do. That place you got for the girl, the flat. Eilis phoned in for a hold on the place. Turns out that a woman the name of Patricia Fahy phoned in to report a burglary there last night. She’s the Mullen girl’s flatmate.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Nope. She’s up at the flat now.”
“F-a-h-e-y?”
“No e.”
Malone drove fast. He was lucky with traffic lights. Minogue let his arm dangle out the window. The Nissan’s door panels remained hot under his hand. He checked his watch as they turned into Inishowen Gardens: ten minutes. A group of boys was tapping a scuffed soccer ball across the street to one another.
“There’s another one,” he heard one of them, a boy with protruding ribs and shoulder-blades and a Spurs shirt wrapped around his waist, call out.
“There’s a squad car anyway,” said Malone.
The boys followed the Nissan to a house where the squad car was parked. A small crowd, mostly children, had gathered at the gate. The house had been split into two flats. Minogue stepped up the pitted concrete steps to the open door. Already he could smell perfume. A Guard was coming down the stairs sideways from the flat above. Minogue introduced himself. The Guard headed back up the stairs, the wet patch on his shirt shifting from side to side as he ascended. Minogue thought at first that the flat must have been a chemist’s shop or a beauty parlour. The floor was littered with hair spray cans and tubes, nail polish containers, mascara brushes and shampoo.
A woman with short, stiff, black hair was talking with another Guard. She had a pale face and dark eyelashes. Minogue glanced at her before picking his way through the mess on the floor to peek into the other rooms. A tiny kitchenette similarly wrecked, the fridge door still open, the cupboards emptied onto the floor. Both bedrooms had been turned upside down. Minogue made his way back to the Guard.
“How’s the man. Listen, has she mentioned the flatmate?”
“She hasn’t. We got the word to hold fire until you showed.”
Minogue looked around at his feet. The perfume stung high up in his nose.
“What kind of a place is this anyway?”
“This one worked as a hairdresser. She was always trying out new stuff, she says. Jases. I have two young ones at home and they’re just starting off on this stuff. ‘Da, I have to get this,’ ‘Da, everyone wears it this way now.’ Jases. Is this what’s in store for me too?”
Another Guard came to the doorway and gestured to Minogue.
Minogue turned back to the first Guard.
“Do you know this house for anything before?”
The Guard shook his head.
“But she looks like a tough enough young one to me. Been around, like.”
Minogue negotiated his way over the litter. Patricia Fahy was still talking to the second Guard. The Guard nodded at Minogue, folded his notebook and tiptoed around to the door.
“Hello,” Minogue said to her. “My colleague Detective Malone. I’m Inspector Minogue. Matt Minogue.”
Patricia Fahy stood with her arms folded. She kept flicking her cigarette.
“Are yous with them, then?”
“No, we’re not,” replied Minogue. Her face seemed to lift a little. “We were notified when you called in to report the burglary.”
“Burglary?” She spoke with more humour than disdain. “Jases, more like a demolition squad.”
She took a long pull of the cigarette. It came away from her lips with a soft pop.
“So, what are yous going to do about it?”
“We’ll do our utmost.”
She squinted into the glare from the window. On her shoulder by a strap of her top, Minogue spotted a tattoo of a butterfly. The sun glinted off the jewellery in her nose.
“Goes to show you, doesn’t it,” she said. “I mean to say we’re the ones out working and trying to pay our bleeding way and lookit! Rob you blind, so they would.”
Some memory slid around in Minogue’s thoughts: Iseult at fourteen, eying him after saying something provocative. She was staring at Malone now.
“Jases,” she declared. “I seen you before. You’re not a Guard. I know you. Remember? With Jacko and Eileen and…? Down in Sheehan’s pub? It’s you, is’n it?”
Malone bit his lip.
“No. Wasn’t me.”
Her face twisted up in a sneer of disbelief.
“Bleeding sure it was you! You ended up in the nick too, if I remember. What’s that?”
Malone let her take his card. She turned it over, brought it up close, scraped it with her nail.
“Well, it looks like you. Is this a joke or something?”
“What time were you home last night?” asked Minogue.
“Home here? I wasn’t. I was with me fella. We were over at his place.”
“You came home from work yesterday and…?”
She engaged his look for several seconds.
“What?”
“Was Mary home yesterday?” Minogue asked.
“No.”
She drew on the cigarette again and squinted through the smoke at Minogue.
“Not at all?”
“What’s all this about Mary?”
The cigarette was shaking now, Minogue noted.
“What’s going on here? Yous aren’t here just because the place got broken into, are you?”
“When did you see her last then?” asked Malone.
“Day before yesterday. Why?”
“She doesn’t spend all of her time here, you’re saying,” Minogue tried.
“I’m not saying anything. What’s all this about? Who are yous?”
Something in Minogue’s expression made her frown. She turned to Malone with words framed on her lips, but none came. Minogue waited until her eyes came back to his. She backed away from him.
“No way,” she whispered. She pointed at Malone. “You’re trying to set me up or something! But I seen you before, I remember you! Yous are trying to pin something on Mary!”
Minogue shifted his stance.
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Oh there you go now! Now you’re starting!”
“Why?”
“Just because once she was…”
She didn’t finish. She let the smoke curl up from her open mouth and she stared at Malone.
“And you,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it stinks.”
“You’ve got it wrong,” said Malone.
“Liar,” she murmured. “You’re trying to screw me with something here. It won’t work, ’cause I know what I know. I remember your face, and I remember you bragging about being a hard chaw-yeah, you were into drugs-”
“That was me brother.”
Malone rubbed his nose and looked around the room. She stuck her head out.
“Your brother?”
“That’s what I said, yeah.” Malone kept biting his lip. “Me brother. We’re twins.”
She started to smile but couldn’t manage it.
“This is bleeding ridiculous! Jesus. I never heard that one before, so I didn’t.”
“I have some bad news for you, Miss Fahy,” said Minogue.
She turned back to Minogue and gave a short breathless guffaw. He stared into her eyes and watched the disdain slide off her face. Now when she blinked she seemed to have trouble raising her eyelids again.
“What are you telling me?”
A droplet fell from Minogue’s armpit. The stench of spilled and punctured cosmetic containers had made him groggy. His fingertips came away slick from his forehead.
“Mary is dead. We need your help, Miss Fahy.”
Her nostrils flared and she dropped her head. Malone stepped across to her. She jerked her head up but her eyes stayed shut. Tears ran sideways across her cheeks and her stomach began to shudder. Malone reached aroun
d her waist. Her sobs gave way to short squeals.
“You’re all right,” said Malone.
The stink of smoke and beer from the open doors of the pubs seemed to follow him down the street. The burger and chips he had downed a half an hour back had formed a greasy lump in the bottom of his stomach. The joint had worn off. He had a pain in his back. He was thirsty again. That moron Jammy didn’t know the half of what he could do. Mister Straight. Never taken a chance in his life.
The air around him seemed to be thick and smelly and he couldn’t escape it. He watched the buildings quiver above the traffic. He had one joint and a bluey left in his pocket. If he dropped the bluey now, he’d get Jammy Tierney’s face out of his brain. Junkie: he couldn’t get the word out of his head. Bastard. He should’ve given Jammy a dig for that, no matter if he got a hiding in return. Show him he still had his self-respect. He looked over the stalled traffic and spotted a bus.
Three business types with their jackets held over their shoulders came down the steps of a new office building. The office had those green windows you couldn’t see in. Laughing about something, with their ties loosened, like they were models in an ad. They stopped at the bottom of the steps and he heard their southside accents. See you in Hogans tonight maybe, Jonathan? One of them had a bag with the handle of a racquet sticking out. Some of them played squash instead of eating their dinner, he knew. Some day’s work. Work? Banging on a computer once in a while, playing with bits of paper and phones. Christ. He stopped and looked back at them. What did Mary say about them? They picked up a phone and made money, that’s how it was. Just picked up a phone. As if money were made by magic, down the end of a phone or on a bloody computer screen. Wheeler-dealers. One set of rules for them and a different set for everyone else. They had the inside track all right, just knowing where everything was going down and when.
The traffic began to move. The bus approached but passed the stop. Damn bus was going to the garage. Jesus! The people in the queue murmured and rearranged themselves. An oul one put her shopping bag down again and sighed. Her forehead was shiny and pink and her face looked all swollen, like she was going to burst. The three models were still talking on the steps behind. They didn’t wait on buses. Behind them, the office had disappeared. It had been taken over by sky. He stared at it. For several seconds his senses were decoyed. Another suit coming out of the door brought it all back. He tried to see through the reflections on the glass. He couldn’t see a thing inside. How the hell did a building stay up if it was all glass?