by John Brady
“But she drank plenty,” said Minogue. “And had hash too.”
“Jamesy told me that he asked her for a joint but she told him it was all gone. And she liked to drink in the pubs, more than at home,” said Crossan.
“She could have been lying about the dope,” Hoey said.
“Whether or which,” Crossan continued, “I half expected this line from ye. I’m not complaining, now. Jamesy told me he remembered her saying she’d see them later on, after they made up.”
“That was in the thing he wrote too,” Minogue murmured. “But-I have to say this now-after all that time in jail, he’d have time to make up anything. Not even to speak of the mental trouble. He mightn’t even have known he was making it up.”
Crossan drew in his breath through his teeth.
“You may well be right,” he said, “but humour me a little, can’t you?”
“All right, so. I will,” said Minogue, “by changing the subject a little. I haven’t yet found any mention of smoke inhalation in the stuff I was able to collect so far. It’s almost always that finding which establishes clear cause of death in something like this.”
“Right,” said Crossan. His face had set into a grim smile. “And I haven’t been idle here at all. I’ve been trying to hunt down a copy of the autopsy performed on Jane. So far all I have is two telephone conversations with a clerk who looks after them. She got shy of me asking all those questions and as much as told me I’d have to put my request in writing-through Dublin, if you don’t mind, too. I’d sort of let the matter lie, but I think it’s time to hammer away at it again.”
Minogue stretched his fingers. Kilmartin should be exploding just about now, he reflected.
“In some respects Jamesy brought his own shovel to dig his grave,” Crossan said. He paused to swallow a portion of his sandwich and touched his lips as though to help the bolus descend past his protruding Adam’s apple.
“Here, you better take some of these before I have them all gone.”
Minogue took a half sandwich. Hoey slid down in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles.
“Back to this memory thing now,” Crossan resumed. “The nervous breakdown probably confused things even more. Jamesy admitted to me that his memory was tatty enough. He also told me that they-the psychiatric staff, he meant-had robbed him of his memory deliberately. With the convulsive therapy and the drugs, he meant.”
“Uh-oh, here we go now,” said Minogue. “Deliberately for what?”
“I had the selfsame reaction,” said Crossan. “Didn’t ask him. When I heard him talk that way, I thought it was all a lost cause. If he couldn’t recall details I could verify, then I was at bedrock.”
“Well, how is it he was able to recall anything at all?” Hoey asked.
“He maintained that things came back to him over the last few years.” said Crossan. “He’d had dreams.”
Hoey released a mouthful of smoke and watched it travel in a ball toward the ceiling. Minogue’s wandering eyes looked up from where they had been browsing, and he became aware of Crossan’s anger.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” said Crossan. “Jamesy Bourke is-was-a head-case. Obsessed, paranoid, delusional-the whole bit. He probably had psychotic episodes. I never said I believed his version of things. I told you”-Crossan pointed his finger at Minogue-“that in no way was I sure that a proper verdict had not been delivered. Am I clear on this?”
Hoey looked to Minogue and shrugged. A lounge-boy asked if they wanted more sandwiches. Minogue waved him away.
“Okay,” said Minogue. “Let me move on again: the odd accounting of time and who’s where the night of the fire. I expected to find a better mention in the book of evidence of the people involved. Of course, if I had the trial transcript proper, maybe I wouldn’t be thinking what I’m thinking. But usually the book of evidence has the stuff laid out a lot clearer. You know, a clear run of events, the time, the people. I lit on this probably because I’m oftentimes the one who gets called up by the State and I bring a judge or a jury through the places and the times and the people with the proper prods from counsel.”
Crossan was studying the smoke rising from the ashtray. He looked up and nodded once.
“So you saw that too. Look. Think back to that night again. Jamesy Bourke is on the piss in serious fashion and he bowls around to Jane Clark’s place. With amorous intent, you can imagine. It’s around the nine o’clock mark. A fine summer’s evening.”
Crossan began stripping the crust from another sandwich.
“In the door he goes, with a great welcome for himself, no doubt. Thereupon he discovers that Jane Clark is, shall we say, in congress with another suitor.”
“Dan Howard,” said Minogue.
“Yes, the very man. In flagrante.”
Minogue noted Crossan’s delicate mannerisms. The barrister dropped a long section of crust with a deliberate gesture the Inspector read as a sign of distaste.
“Words are exchanged, a row starts. They end up rowing out the back of the cottage. Jane Clark starts laughing at them. So far it’s a comedy. She locks the door, throws Dan Howard’s clothes out into the yard. Dan Howard collects a few pucks from Jamesy and they give one another the odd dig. Shouting at one another, that class of thing. No major damage being done so far, except to the male ego, maybe.”
Crossan paused to take an exploratory bite of his new sandwich.
“Jamesy has cooled down a little. Don’t underestimate Dan’s ability to talk his way out of trouble, now. Anyway. They both leave for the village with their heads hanging. Yes, they sloother into the village without damaging themselves.”
The barrister looked down his nose at the sandwich. Something in the sandwich took his attention and he peered in between the slices of bread.
“Jamesy is by times threatening to beat the shite out of Dan Howard and then by times cursing Jane Clark. In any event, by the time they walk into the village, they’re mighty thirsty. Howard has conceded that Jane Clark and himself had a bit of a thing going, ‘a fling’ as one might say, for several weeks prior. He tells Jamesy that she was, quote, ‘only a hoor,’ and that, between friends, they should give her the thumbs-down and not fall out over her. Dan Howard and Jamesy repair to the pub. Howard pours oil on the waters by plying Jamesy with drink. They’re there until closing time and beyond.”
“Where were they drinking?”
“Howard’s hotel, the Portaree Inn.”
“How did Howard get around? Didn’t he have a car?”
“He did, but not that night. It’s as well too, I suppose. He was full of drink most of the evening and more or less legless by the end of the night. It was Sheila Hanratty who tracked him down in the pub and put him in the door of his house.”
Something in the way Crossan spoke her name released an airy feeling in Minogue’s stomach. For an instant he imagined her in sunlight, the light showing up fair hairs on her forearms.
“Didn’t she get called to the stand?”
“Yes, she did. She was one of the witnesses brought up to testify to Jane Clark’s mode of living as regards drink and carry-on.”
“Who called her to the stand, anyhow?”
“Tighe, the lawyer. By this stage he had nothing going for him except to chop down Jamesy’s responsibility as best he can. Paint the victim in as bad a light as you can without having judge or counsel call you on it-and avoid offending the jury either-and that can influence the sentencing.”
“Was she his girlfriend then?”
“She wasn’t really doing a line with Howard. She hung around in her own mousy, demure way.”
“Mousy?” Minogue could not keep from saying.
“Oh, I grant you she’s no longer mousy,” said Crossan. “She had her designs on him. But, sure, so did half the county. Dan was a class of, what would I say in these enlightened times…”
“A ladies’ man?”
Crossan’s grin beamed suddenly and then relapsed into a rueful stare at the pattern
s in the carpet.
“More like a whoremaster.”
“That’s a term of some weight,” said Minogue. “Even for a lawyer to utter.”
“You don’t say, now.”
“You mean, I take it, that it was all right for Dan Howard to play the field but Jane Clark, she was supposed to go by different rules of conduct?”
“Right,” Crossan replied with a clear hint of derision. “You don’t need informing on the mores of Catholic Ireland, do you?”
“What did you think of Jane Clark yourself?” Minogue asked.
“Trouble,” Crossan answered without hesitation. “A lot of trouble. But she was a very exotic bloom in these parts. Like one of those plants up above on the Burren, something that’d have the botanists drooling over it: how the hell did it get here and how the hell can it grow in the middle of all this… Oh sure, tourists come and go, but for one to stay and try and make a home of it around here? She was very talented. But hearing about her and that girl Eilo McInerny coloured things a bit even for me. Not because of what they did but because I knew the girl was no match for Jane Clark.”
Crossan picked up another corner of sandwich but dropped it abruptly. He curled his lip. “Look, even if she seduced half the village, the parish priest and the schoolgirls even-”
“Did she?”
“Don’t be an iijit. Of course she didn’t. But the way the testimony was given and used, it sounded like she was the divil incarnate. What I was saying is that Jane Clark was not the galvanised bitch she is remembered as.”
Minogue withdrew into his own muddled thoughts. Crossan poured more coffee. Hoey scratched himself slowly and carefully under his arm. Crossan’s long bony forearms escaped his cuffs and his hands moved expertly around the cup to grasp the spoon.
“You can actually say ‘bisexual’ now without having to duck your head,” Minogue mused.
“You don’t say,” Crossan drawled. “This young one, Eilo McInerny- a waif in from Ballygobackwards-eventually said that she had been dragooned into the whole lesbian thing. Seduced.”
“You have this McInerny girl’s whereabouts, don’t you?”
“Just about. It took me time, I can tell you. She went to England right after the trial, but she finally came back. She’s working in a hotel below in Tralee. Another casualty we forgot about, I suppose. A lousy enough life she had, skivvying in the hotel and no prospects. I don’t doubt but that Dan Howard might have tried knocking on her door by times too. But Tighe got her up on the stand to help hammer home the witch bit. The devil-woman, the man-eater.”
Crossan broke off to drink some of his coffee.
“So Tighe did a good hatchet job on Jane Clark, I suppose,” Minogue prodded.
“So he thought until the sentencing: a life sentence for a charge of manslaughter. That was the shocker. Sweeney, the judge, had a rep, but even Tighe didn’t expect Sweeney to hit that hard. That’s what I still can’t get over, if you want to know.”
“What?”
“You’d think one person couldn’t have all that bad luck land on them. Or at least poor Jamesy didn’t deserve all that went on. Look. He finds out that the one he thinks is his girlfriend, his ticket out of being a lost soul out on a farm in the back end of the bloody Burren, she has other interests. Gets Tighe, brand new banister on the Legal Aid panel, to defend him. And then, even if he had King Solomon in his comer, he draws bloody Sweeney as the judge for the trial-a notorious one-man morality squad. Maybe it’s no wonder Jamesy went under, gave up on the system.”
Crossan’s eyes were bulging over the rim of his cup when he finished. He steadied it with the fingertips of his left hand and turned to watch as three tourists stepped into the foyer.
“I’m willing to start with this Eilo McInerny,” said Minogue. “In Tralee, you said. Have you spoken to her?”
“Matter of fact, I did,” said Crossan. “I phoned her a few months back, asked her would she be willing to talk it over, what she remembered of the night and so on.”
“How’d she react?”
“Told me I was wasting me time-her time too.”
Minogue looked over at Hoey to find him busy trying to scratch out a stain on the knee of his trousers with his thumbnail.
“Let me try with her now, then,” said Minogue to Crossan.
“When, like?”
Minogue glanced at Hoey again.
“Today. This afternoon. Whenever. Why not?”
“I’ll have to make sure she’s still there,” said Crossan. “And I’d have to tell her what we’re about. That ye’re Guards and so on. No shillyshallying here. Proper disclosure.”
Minogue shrugged his concession. A lanky youth with a crew cut sharp over a slack, pimply face appeared in the foyer. Minogue watched the youth seek him out, his eyes shifting from Crossan to Hoey to himself and then settling back on him.
“There’s a phone call beyond for a Mr Minogue, a Guard.”
Minogue thanked him and rose.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Crossan. “I’ll try to get in touch with the hotel in Tralee right now. Would you drive down there this afternoon?”
“Sure, I will,” said the Inspector. He poked Hoey in the shoulder.
“Do you want to talk to the Killer instead?”
Hoey feigned a grin but it was one of aversion. He reached reflexively for his cigarettes. Crossan went in search of a phone. Minogue sloped over to the desk and was directed to a stool by the wall. He sat down and leaned against the wall.
“Yes, Jimmy,” he said, and held the phone away from his ear.
“Close, but not close enough.”
Minogue elbowed away from the wall with the surprise.
“I wasn’t expecting-”
“You have such high regard for journalists like Hynes that you fired him right in my face?”
Minogue tried desperately to gauge the current mood of Garda Commissioner Tynan.
“Ah now, John. Shorty Hynes is like that. I merely passed on some facts to him. He’s not my puppet, now.”
“He’s an nasty little gawker. What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be off on your holidays.”
“Has Jim Kilmartin been in touch with you?”
“I was in touch with him,” said Tynan. “Ask me if it was before or after I received calls from Superintendent Tom Russell and Hynes.”
Jesus, I’m sunk, thought Minogue.
“You know Tom Russell, don’t you?” Tynan pressed on.
“Yes, I’ve met him briefly.”
“In the recent past?”
Minogue suspected that Tynan’s sarcasm was a teasing prelude to tearing his head off.
“Look, John-”
“Look, yourself. Tom Russell wants you out of his hair. I want Tom Russell out of my hair. He says you showed up at the Garda station in Ennis without an invite but with an IRA lawyer.”
“Wait a minute. Crossan’s not that, he’s just a damn good barrister who wins too many down here.”
“What are you doing prowling around there teamed up with this lawyer and another Guard on leave? One Seamus Hoey?”
“Give me five minutes-no, three minutes-to explain. Three minutes.”
“You had your five minutes and more in Bewleys restaurant the other day. I phoned Kilmartin and told him I’d be speaking with you over this, what can I call it, gatecrashing. He asked if you’d be kind enough to phone him after our conversation. I believe he has something to tell you.”
He’d not need to pick up a phone in Dublin for me to hear him, thought Minogue.
“Three minutes, John. Did Hynes give any details?”
“‘Details’? All Hynes and his ilk are likely to give me is a migraine.”
“But maybe he believes that the Garda Commissioner should know that a man accused of and freely confessing to the shooting death of another man, with the use of a firearm illegally imported into this country, is allowed back to Germany on his bail.”
“Is this a record
ing of a speech you’ve prepared? Does a journalist think this would be the first time that Justice has left Guards with their jaws hanging? This is news? If Hynes wants to make a thing of it, it’s in the Department of Justice and the Courts he should be kicking shins.”
“Didn’t he tell you anything about the man who was killed, though?” Minogue persisted.
“I didn’t give Hynes the chance. I gave him the number for an Assistant Secretary in Justice.”
“It’s the fella who was killed. That’s what has me here. Listen, about twelve years back…”
Minogue’s armpits were itching when he finished. Tynan had not tried to interrupt him. Minogue looked down to see that one of his feet was tapping away rapidly with a will of its own.
“You’re on holidays, right?” Tynan asked finally.
“Right.”
“You’re Sean Citizen in Ennis. You’re pursuing some research of your own. Right?”
“Right.”
“And there’s no call for you to be elbowing yourself in to investigate this shooting, pestering people to see autopsy reports or hang about the scene. Right?”
Minogue baulked.
“Do you hear me?” Tynan’s tone was mild enough for Minogue to recognise the impatience. “And Tom Russell and his well-trained Gardai can manage this shooting all the better now that he knows I’m aware of it here. Do you recognise that?”
“Yes,” said Minogue. “But-”
“Tom Russell will take care of it. Consider me briefed. As for the other stuff, your hobby there-”
“Look, John, the more I learn about it, the worse it looks. Bad process at the very least. If ever the Murder Squad should have been-”
“Wait, wait,” Tynan broke in. “Go ahead and find bad process then. You wouldn’t be the first to find it. But just for your own edification now, proceed with your research, but only if it has some basis in fact. I want to know in advance of anything important you expect to dig up. Phone Kilmartin too, by all means, and tell him you are to keep me posted. Point number two is this: I’m wondering if you might get vexed enough if things don’t go your way in Ennis to leak some more laments to the likes of Hynes. ‘Commissioner and Superintendent try to quash investigation into shooting.’ Call Hynes off, man. You went right over the wall with that, now. I don’t need to tell you. If you leak again, I’ll have you plugged. You made your point. If I see stuff like that in the papers, I’ll step out of Russell’s way.”