by John Brady
Kathleen had issued the very same admonitions to Iseult. Did every Irish parent have the same script? He gathered his thoughts to frame the next question.
“Do you recall if Bourke himself was teased about what had happened back at the cottage, if he had his sensitivities tested on the matter by people in the pub that night?”
It was Dan Howard who answered.
“Well, people tend to slag a lot. It’s a pastime of sorts, and that’s common knowledge.” He rubbed at his chin and looked at a landscape print on the wall as though he believed it held the words and knowledge he needed.
“I didn’t slag him at all and I’ll tell you why: I didn’t want a puck from him. Even while he was drunk, he could still rear up on you and throw shapes. We were out in the street around half twelve or so.”
“Your people owned the pub, didn’t they?” Minogue interrupted. Howard frowned.
“Yes, yes. My father did. I mean, he still does, yes… Oh, I see what you mean. We didn’t live over the pub at all, oh no. Our house was out the Ennis Road. We had a man living over the pub. We hung around on the street awhile, a few of us. It was a warm night.”
“Jamesy went his own way,” Sheila Howard said.
“You were there?” asked Minogue.
“Yes, I hung around. I wasn’t tired really. But I went off home myself a little later.”
“After she drove me home,” Howard added.
Minogue began to draw detail out of the fog. “Ah, the car.”
“I had loaned the Mini to Sheila, remember?” said Howard. “She was gone to Galway for the day.”
Minogue put on his sage and satisfied expression to cloak his rambling thoughts. Were the Howards daring him to put pointed questions-police-like ‘were you aware’s-to them in their own house? He felt Crossan’s eyes on him and he looked over. The lawyer’s eyes were not at full-bore, but his expression was both expectant and mocking as he hooded his eyes slightly to signal Minogue. The Inspector looked away, baffled. Something was going on here that escaped him. He bargained for time by reaching for the teapot. Howard took some turf from a basket, placed it on the fire and sat back with a sigh.
Was this Crossan’s moment of spiteful triumph, having finagled a Garda Inspector into Howard’s home to embarrass the TD and his wife? Doubt clawed at Minogue.
“Yes,” said Howard, “I retired in disarray that night. Sheila poured me into the car and left me at home.”
Minogue decided to brazen his way out of his predicament.
“Did you offer a lift to Bourke?”
“No, I didn’t,” Sheila Howard replied. “I wish to God that I had. I wish that Dan or someone had shoved him into the car.”
“Now,” said Dan Howard. “We’ve been over that a thousand times. Don’t be taking it upon yourself.”
“I know, I know.” She cut him short and looked to Crossan. He returned her level, appraising look.
“I wouldn’t have been safe in the car with Jamesy.” She looked down at the teapot. “I’ll get more tea.”
Crossan sat back and crossed his legs.
“Just between us men,” he murmured. “Jamesy had a tendency to be mauling girls.”
“Rough, in any sense?” Minogue asked. “If they weren’t interested, like?”
“Not to the extent that you seem to be implying,” said Howard.
“Well,” said Crossan from his slouch. “The training in the law stood you in good stead with that one.”
Howard let out a breath.
“I’m sorry. I grew up overnight after that. I don’t mind admitting what I was like before that either. There was privilege and money in my family and I could do as I pleased, really. I didn’t have to look forward to buckling down to the farming like Jamesy would have had to. But I can tell you this.” Howard paused and looked up with a pained expression. “I can’t go around full of remorse about it the rest of my life. Yes, Jamesy saw in her the love of his life and all the rest of it. But I was hail-fellow-well-met, playing the field. It’s not my fault that Jamesy was the way he was, God rest him.”
“Thank you for being so candid,” Minogue said. “Rely upon this being a confidential matter between us.”
Howard nodded and looked to the fresh sods of turf beginning to catch fire.
“If only she had come down to the pub that night,” he murmured, “and got rip-roaring drunk with us, things might have been much different. She wouldn’t open the door to him at that hour of the morning, and, sure, why should she? Sick of the pair of us, I’ve no doubt.”
Minogue asked where a bathroom might be and excused himself. He stopped in the hall and looked into the greenhouse kitchen. Terra-cotta tiles, dried flowers, real wood panels and all the wizard devices. Here was something he had seen only in the colour supplements of the English Sunday papers. He had tried to persuade Kathleen that such kitchens existed only in showrooms and advertisements but here was proof otherwise. He heard a kettle purr stronger and a paper turn- Sheila Howard was there, he realised, and he moved off.
He switched on the light in the toilet. Blue water in a green porcelain toilet startled him. For that moment before he recognised modernity, he imagined some disease in a household member. He remembered that Kilmartin’s new home in Killiney harboured the same gentility. Tired, tired, he thought. No toys underfoot. A damn fine house, the Inspector decided. And the Howards seemed to be polished, accomplished people, with none of that gombeen smugness he had expected. They seemed well-used to one another and even intimate in ways he felt were sincere. He could not imagine them having a screaming row. There was the touch of the resting champion to Dan Howard at home here, the certainty of his return to dynamism and diligence tomorrow. Parliamentarian and businessman, Howard gave Minogue the impression of one who advanced steadily and relentlessly on some goal.
He flushed the toilet and stared at his face in the mirror. Howard’s no mere base charmer, he thought. He had that air of durability, a man you could dependably expect to be there in twenty years, higher in the constellation of public life. Maybe shaking hands with one of those plain-suited, smiling Japanese billionaires, both togged out in hard hats as the sod is turned for a factory to manufacture whats-its in Portaroe or Ennis or Gortaboher.
There was nothing providential about Sheila Hanratty’s success either. She gave Minogue the same sense of diligence and control as did her husband. Tolerating Crossan, knowing that he knew that she and her husband could outlast him, she went her own way. Were they going to remain childless, Minogue wondered with sudden pity? Maybe a shared sadness there had given them their composure and solidarity?
He draped the towel carefully on the rail. There on the wall to his left was a print, a scene of stones and grasses topped by the orb of a golden sun. He squinted at the print close up, but found no place that he recognised exactly. Then he thought of that warm evening twelve years ago, young men and women, not yet out of their careless years. A summer’s night with music spilling out into the night-street from the open doors and windows of the pub. The Portaree Inn, or Howard’s Hotel as Minogue had known it in his youth, had been uninspiring enough, but Tidy Howard had seen his chance and he had plumbed, nailed, illuminated and painted his way into presenting what tourists might imagine a traditional country inn could or should have looked like.
Minogue recalled the stone walls of the Portaree Inn shiny with coats of polyurethane, the light from brass lamps, their lustre factory-aged, glistening on the stone. Locals who had laughed laughed no more. Their sons found work building houses and fixing roads, pouring drink for visitors. Commerce in high gear had pounced on Portaree, and a population which had known only episodic bursts of comfort in the form of work for non-inheriting children leapt at the opportunities. Minogue had himself observed the prospering village on his many forays to his home county over the years. The disingenuity of the “traditional” being hawked in the Portaree Inn-the Inn and the Out of it, Mick still called it-and the ingenuity of Tidy Howard, by now a f
igure of stature in more ways than one, had impressed Minogue. He had returned to Dublin after those holidays unable or unwilling to join in his brother’s disparagement. Mick had carried on the farm and forced emigration was unknown to him, Minogue reasoned. Why be ashamed of wanting prosperity?
He shook himself out of his wonderings and left the bathroom. In the hall he heard Crossan’s characteristic rapid-fire tones barked out behind the living-room door. He stopped by the closed door and swept his fingers over the top of his fly for the third time, again to make certain that he had zipped it and would not make a complete iijit of himself in front of Sheila Howard. He look about the hallway again. The staircase spindles were clear-lacquered over a cherry-coloured varnish and the mahogany handrail curved as the staircase ascended. The hall door was a generous width, heavy between slim windows to both sides…
Minogue stopped his hand turning the knob and looked more intently toward one of the windows flanking the door. Gone, whatever it had been. A cat or a dog out by the cars? He let go of the door-handle and stepped across to the window. He stared at the pebbled drive where his Fiat was parked, stubby and down-at-heel next to the Audi. Light from above the hall door outside did little more than confirm the shapes of the cars and outline the low hedges nearby. But someone was out there.
His fingertips began to tingle and he held his breath. His mind could not fasten on anything beyond his own quickening heartbeat now. He stepped back from the window but kept his eyes on the narrow strip of glass. Half-formed images tore through his mind: the muzzle of a gun firing, the sense that the world in smithereens had been thrown at impossible speeds into the air, the bomb’s shock waves pounding his eardrums, the windscreen coming in at him like a lace tablecloth. His mouth turned chalky with the memory of his own near-fatal greeting from death. Sourness burned low in his throat and he heard his breath come out in a tight sigh.
He grasped the door handle, turned it sharply and stepped through the doorway. Crossan said all right to Howard who said the day after tomorrow and I was already in touch with Father O’Loughlin and he knew the Bourkes years ago… Eyes turned toward the Inspector and stayed on him. The broad window to his left, that graceful opening to the night outside which had pleased him before, now issued a silent shriek of alarm. Ice gathered in his chest.
“What is it?” someone said, a man’s voice.
Minogue looked: Howard. The window remained in his side vision.
“What’s wrong?” Crossan asked.
Minogue’s thoughts returned. Damn: he had walked by the phone in the hall. Go back?
“I’m not certain now,” he began. He tried to clear his throat. “I’m not sure now, but I think I saw someone outside.”
Howard’s eyes snapped into an intense stare.
“Does there be anyone around here at night?” Minogue asked.
“No,” said Howard.
The Inspector reached over to the strings and began pulling the curtains closed. Howard catapulted up from the sofa and grasped Sheila Howard’s arm. Crossan stood to a crouch.
“We’d do well to stay low,” Minogue whispered, and he sank to his knees. He put his hands out on the floor. He remembered playing horsey with Daithi and Iseult twenty years previously.
“Aren’t we being kind of stu-” Crossan began.
“No!” snapped Minogue. The Howards were now on all fours and Crossan was kneeling.
“The phone-” Minogue started to say when the curtains danced. An instant later, even before he heard the chat-chat-chat of automatic fire, pieces of glass batted and tore at the curtains before cascading onto the floor. More tears appeared in the curtain and it danced quicker, as though being whacked by invisible hands. Minogue felt his cheek against the wood floor. A part of his mind not swept away in panic wondered about ricochets. He opened his eyes and saw the spots being punched across the ceiling. Fragments of cornice and plaster flew in the air and dust swirled under the ceiling light. Then it was dark. Minogue heard a lampshade being flung against the wall. Small, sharp things rained down on him. Wood splintered and he heard the window frame chirrup before it disintegrated. Minogue clenched his eyelids tight then against the maelstrom of dust and minute flying shards and he began to wriggle toward the doorway. Through his knees and elbows he felt the dull percussive thump of bullets as they hit the walls and were stopped by the stone bulk within the plaster.
Several seconds passed before he realised that the shooting had stopped. The remains of the ceiling light kept swinging wildly in the lull. The torn curtains settled slowly against the window-sill. Odd fragments of glass and plaster fell at intervals, making Minogue’s heart leap each time. He steeled himself for the shooting to resume, for footsteps coming up the steps or running through the kitchen. He rubbed knuckles in his eye sockets and opened his eyes cautiously. Light from the hall sliced into the clouds of dust. He looked up at the wire of the ceiling light still swinging, the frayed curtains. Suddenly his body tensed: he heard running steps on the gravel outside.
They were going away from the house. As the sound of the footsteps receded, he began to hear gasps nearby. The fire glowed in the grate still, its yellow glow widened but dulled by the slowly falling dust. The room was now eerily calm.
“Are ye there?” Minogue whispered. An engine coughed down on the road and he listened intently, hoping that he could at least tell if it was a six- or a four-cylinder or something.
“I think so,” Howard answered.
“Yes,” said Sheila Howard.
The engine didn’t catch on the first turn of the key. When it did, the driver let out the clutch immediately and the tires bit in, leaving a rasping hiss as they scrambled for traction on the wet road.
“Is there anyone hurt?” Minogue hissed. No one answered.
“Alo!” Howard called out.
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Crossan replied before coughing. He elbowed up from the floor. “This isn’t my house at all,” he spluttered and coughed again.
“We’ll get out of here right away,” Minogue said. “They may have left something behind them that could do damage.”
Like figures in a dream, the Howards, with Crossan following, scurried like monkeys to the door.
“Stay well down still,” Minogue warned. He reached up from his crouch and switched off the hall light, then hurried the shambling, hopping figures toward the kitchen and the rear of the house.
CHAPTER TEN
Russell showed up an hour after the first Gardai from Ennis, and a half-hour after two carloads of Guards from the Emergency Response Units. A half-dozen squad cars, an ambulance and several vans now clogged the road by the gates. Minogue watched the Superintendent slide out of his seat and listen while a Sergeant briefed him. Minogue was sitting in the passenger seat of a squad car, the Howards in the back. Crossan, the last to be interviewed, was in a nearby squad car. Minogue had noticed that the ERU Guards didn’t mix much with the uniformed Guards. The former had at least covered their guns after inspecting the house. Minogue looked down at the Elastoplast on the back of his hand. The air in the car was too hot now and he turned down the blower.
He spoke over his shoulder to the Howards.
“Are ye warm enough in the back?”
Sheila Howard was leaning into her husband and he had his arm around her shoulders. Dan Howard touched his forehead where a small, fine piece of glass had been expertly removed by an ambulance attendant.
“We are,” said Howard in a whisper.
The interior light of the Toyota accentuated Howard’s pallor. His curls were greyed lighter in parts by dust from the pulverised plaster. Minogue turned around. His elbows rubbed at the cloth of his jacket and reminded him that he had rubbed raw spots there from his movement across the floor during the fusillade. Sheila Howard’s eyes were small and fixed on the headrest in front of her.
“Are they here yet?” Howard asked.
The bomb squad, he means, Minogue realised. He edged closer to the windscreen to be rid
of the glare from inside the car and squinted at the house. His Fiat and the Audi seemed like sleeping, animate threats. He still couldn’t believe that his own geriatric, baby-blue Fiat-a mobile part of his and Kathleen’s home, full of receipts five years old, tinfoil from chocolate bars (Kathleen still liked Whole Nut, he recalled lazily), hairpins, screws and nuts, faded maps and ancient paper handkerchiefs used and unused-all this, and now his car might harbour sudden death. He shivered in spite of the heat.
“I don’t think so,” he said to Howard.
The driver’s door opened and Russell, strangely chaste in civvies, got in.
“Evening, Dan, missus,” said the Superintendent before he slammed the door against the damp air. “Don’t be worrying now. I’m not about to drive off.”
The Howards didn’t seem to notice the humour.
“And the man himself,” said Russell, nodding to Minogue. “Alo Crossan’s the fourth one?”
“Yes,” said Minogue.
“Let’s see Alo stand up in court and defend these gangsters now, after we catch them,” Russell said. “See if tonight’s work has given Alo a bit of insight into his clientele.” He turned away from Minogue as best he could under the wheel and addressed the Howards.
“Sure ye wouldn’t like to stop in at the ’ospital, just in case?”
Howard shook his head. Minogue watched Russell’s eyes make a study of the Howards for competence, shock.
“We’re going to wait for a bit of daylight to have a look at the cars,” Russell went on. “We can get new sensors down from Dublin that might save us putting a few dents in the vehicles. Have ye a place to go tonight?”
“Well,” Howard mumbled, and glanced at his wife.
“We’ll have Guards with ye night and day, that goes without saying,” said Russell.
“All right,” said Howard. “I mean, thanks.”
“We found casings-spent ammunition, that is to say-out in the driveway,” Russell said mildly. “It looks as if someone fired a submachine gun.”