by John Brady
The tyres bit and skidded as the squad car came to a stop behind the van. Doors opened and he heard voices, a radio. Somebody said his name. He didn’t have to go back into that house, he was thinking. He walked haltingly toward the car.
“Yes,” he replied to a question. His voice sounded unfamiliar to him now. “Inside… There was shooting. I think they’re dead.”
He wanted to tell them to switch off the noise from the radio. He heard someone say his name on the radio, then repeat it. He knew the voice. The sky jigged and flickered and changed colour.
“She’s in there and I think maybe-” he began.
His knees pulled him down but it didn’t hurt. Hands stopped him falling further. They pulled him up from his knees and grabbed him under his arms.
“Look,” he heard someone say as the sky turned and closed over him. “Is he shot?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I don’t believe it,” Kilmartin murmured. “It must be a joke.” He looked over at Minogue. “Did you ever hear anything so stupid in all your life?”
Minogue shook his head. He dabbed his fingers over his eye. The lump had gone down a little. The X-rays had showed nothing on his knee either. His chest hurt when he breathed in deep. The bruise on his shoulder ran half-way over his shoulder-blade. He felt stupid sitting in a hospital bed.
“What?” Hoey asked. He was leaning on the window-sill.
“It says that a man thinks about sex an average of six times every hour.”
“Who says?” Hoey said.
“A scientist in the States. Somebody’s after codding someone there, by God. Makes you wonder how many millions were wasted on that. God, six times every hour. That’s impossible if you’re doing a proper day’s work.”
“Probably only applies in built-up places like Dublin,” said Hoey.
Kilmartin folded the newspaper and looked over at the Inspector. Minogue had decided that no matter what the doctor said he would be walking out the door at three o’clock today.
“How could you hold down a job, though?” Kilmartin went on. “Every ten minutes…”
“See what you’ve missed,” said Hoey.
“I’m hitting the road in an hour,” Minogue said.
“How?”
“Shea has the get-away car waiting outside.”
Kilmartin glanced at Hoey. Minogue had stayed overnight in the County Hospital in Ennis. He had woken up as he was being moved from the squad car to a stretcher at the door of the hospital. Sedated, he had conked out until nine o’clock this morning. His first sight had been Kilmartin’s size-eleven brogues resting one over the other on his bed several feet from his own face. Minogue’s blinding headache had abated almost completely by lunch-time, but he had no appetite yet. He felt apprehensive, anxious to be on the move again. Several times he had caught Kilmartin and Hoey scrutinising him from a distance.
“Did you phone Kathleen yet?” Kilmartin asked.
“No. And I hope you didn’t either.”
The Chief Inspector raised a hand to mollify. “Course I didn’t. And are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
Crossan had asked the same question four times that Minogue had counted, a Dr Leddy three times, Hoey but twice.
“I’m better off out of here, that I know.”
“But what about everything here?” Kilmartin was unsure of how to rein in Minogue.
“The X-rays are fine. The bruises, well, I’ll have to live with them no matter where I am-”
“The other stuff from last night-”
“I’ll do it all from Dublin, Jimmy.”
Kilmartin frowned. He was not about to give in that easily “Leave Russell to hear from us in Dublin as to what happened here in his own diocese, is it?”
“Exactly.”
“But he’s been waiting for the go-ahead to interview you here. If you’re well enough to travel, you’re well enough to-”
“I told Shea what happened last night. He told you. I told you myself this morning. You told me that you told Russell.” Kilmartin was shaking his head before Minogue was through.
“Wait a minute. I don’t want to be harassing you and you laid up here, but there are a million details-”
“Look, Jimmy, they can be had from Dublin later on. I don’t want to talk about it any more right now.”
Again Kilmartin looked to Hoey as though expecting a signal. Hoey’s eyes went to the window.
“Promise me you’ll go straight to the hospital or a doctor up in Dublin then.”
“All right.”
Kilmartin folded his paper again and tapped the roll on the bed. Minogue had felt the airy calm of the sedative ebbing since mid-morning. He had declined more. Leddy, the doctor with Mr Pickwick glasses, had continued his tests after Minogue’s refusal. He had also given Minogue’s knee a flex more abrupt than the first tests this morning, the Inspector remembered. Minogue was half glad of the returning aches, the stiffness and the burning bands on his wrists. Kilmartin’s final appeal came softly.
“Look, you can’t be taking chances now. You know as well as I do about concussion and shock. Stay another night here, can’t you? It’s for free, man! What’s the big hurry back up to Dublin?”
Minogue didn’t have an answer. From the silence, Kilmartin suspected some success with his efforts.
“Come on. Jases. Let me phone Kathleen. She can hardly eat the head offa me, now.”
“Don’t depend on it…”
Minogue’s thoughts were gone now. He had a floating sensation just before the fear overwhelmed him. The cottage he had stumbled out of, the room full of death. He shuddered and held his breath. Kilmartin looked down at the clenched fists. Hoey stepped away from the window and Kilmartin waved his hand low at him. Hoey slipped out of the room. Minogue’s jaw had locked with the strain and his breath was coming fast. He saw Ciaran being thrown to the floor by the bullet, Deegan’s face as he fell. And they didn’t tell him last night but he knew, the way they said they didn’t know, she was dead.
“Where does it hurt?” he heard Kilmartin whisper.
He knew now that he wouldn’t make it today. Kilmartin called his name again. Like a lost soul himself, whirling, vagrant and steadily slipping away as the dawn leaked into the sky. She was dead. He saw the ferry nosing out into the estuary, the Clare shore in the distance and the drizzle turning to rain. He focussed on Kilmartin’s face. He saw the alarm there and he wanted to reassure him. He opened his mouth. The doctor had appeared. The smug look was gone off his face now. He grabbed Minogue’s wrist. A nurse he hadn’t seen before elbowed Kilmartin aside and pressed a stethoscope to his chest. Minogue thought of Sheila Howard pushing the gun into his chest last night: She thought he had been holding out on them.
“If I had known,” he began to say. Somebody else came into the room.
He woke up stunned with a headache the following day to find Kathleen’s tired eyes on him. He closed his eyes again. The dream was slipping away too fast. He tried to get back, to see the face. Why was he smiling? He looked more familiar now but Minogue knew that the man intended to go. Who the hell was he? A moustache, black hair, eyes that did the talking. Looked like… Iseult? Tell her that sometime, he thought. Then he knew.
He elbowed up and stared at Kathleen. Alarm spread across her face and she came up out of the chair. His eyes left hers and looked beyond her.
“Matt,” she called out. Her hands were on his shoulders. “Will I get the doctor?”
He wondered if she still had that snapshot of him when he’d had the moustache. Two years after they were married, he thought: twenty-eight? His eyes returned to study her face.
“Are you awake now, love?” she asked again. “Are you all right?”
That familiar look to the face in the dream. It had to be. His mouth was full of dust, it seemed. He strained to get his tongue around the words.
“If he was here now, I mean, if he was with us, like… How old would he be now?”
Kathleen’s mou
th stayed open and her eyes grew larger still. She leaned in over him and he looked back into her stricken stare. Hoey, he thought, Nolan, Ciaran. The child Superman in Tralee that day, disappearing around the corner of the street. I’ll layve you there. For a moment he was on the ferry again, searching for the porpoises where the Shannon opened out to the sea.
“What is it, lovey? What’s wrong? Who do you mean?”
“Eamonn. Our Eamonn. How old would he be now?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Inspector began to feel claustrophobic. Drinkers continued to pour into the pub. They stood in front of the table where Minogue, Kilmartin and their wives sat, blocking them in. This idea of Kathleen’s seemed to be backfiring. Maybe he should ease off on the drink.
“How and when did this dump ever get to be so popular?” Kilmartin shouted over the din. “A glorified shebeen. They should do it up nice.”
Kathleen hadn’t slept well for over a week. She had planned this evening out in cahoots with Jim Kilmartin, Minogue guessed. On one of her afternoon visits to her husband in the hospital, she had brought up the topic of putting the house up for sale. Make a fresh start, her logic ran. Though Minogue hadn’t yet been able to say what he believed he should, she had read his expression. For over an hour afterwards, he recalled, she argued aloud with herself while he listened. Though dopey most of the time, he still marvelled that she had read his mind. She had finally declared that it would be good sense to put it off for a year.
A fiddle player tested bow and strings somewhere in the ruck between the foursome and the bar. Minogue was looking up at the men’s pony-tails, the women’s tube skirts. Perfume was thick and sweet in the smoky air. Kilmartin’s wife, Maura, answered her husband’s question.
“There’s a crowd of rock stars and film people living up around here, that’s why. Oh, look! Look, Kathleen! That’s him! Your man, what’s-his-name! Joey Mad-Again. Joey Madigan!”
“They’re brilliant!” said Kathleen.
To Minogue, inspired by two Jamesons, it appeared that she and Maura Kilmartin were both levitating. He looked at them crouched, hovering over their seats. Their heads moving from side to side reminded him of hens prospecting for remnants of grain in a farmyard. Invisible in the crowd, a fiddler played two bars of “The Rakes of Mallow.” The shouting and laughter dropped to a murmur. A tall, unshaven man turned around to find a spot to place his empty glass. Kathleen waved and caught his eye. Joey Madigan, stage-names Joey Mad and Joey Mad-Again, lead singer, founder and guitarist with the hit rock/traditional/folk group Social Welfare, looked around the table and raised his eyebrows.
“Howiya, Joe!” Maura called out.
“Howiya yourself,” he called back.
By the way this Joe wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Minogue pegged him for a man who could drink a lot and had done so tonight. He thought of Hoey. His colleague had taken three weeks’ sick leave. Minogue had last seen Hoey the day before yesterday. Hoey had attended four AA meetings, was dry and looked relaxed. He told Minogue that he was getting his inoculations and booking a flight through to Harare. Hoey assured him several times that it wasn’t a joke. Kilmartin believed Hoey, but continued to treat it as a joke.
“Heard you on the radio, Joe!” Kathleen said. “Will you sing? Will you?”
Since when was Kathleen so bold, her husband wondered. And that look on her face. Radiant. An adoring fan? Kilmartin was looking stonily at this recent star on the Irish music scene.
“Go on, can’t you?” Maura Kilmartin joined in. Her husband’s face set harder as he stared at Joe Mad-Again.
“Give us ‘Dublin Town,’ Joey. Go on, do,” Kathleen pleaded.
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Ah, go on, can’t you?” said Minogue. Kilmartin looked over to his friend in disbelief.
Now he remembered the group. This hit of last summer had launched the group properly. “Dublin Town” was full to the brim of the city’s mocking irony. Madigan had a singular talent for belting the lyrics out with angry, accusatory snarls. Joey Mad seemed to sense Kilmartin’s discomfort. The Chief Inspector had folded his arms and was studying the empty glasses on the table now. Finally, he glared up.
“Ah, go on, do,” he growled, and put on a flinty smile. “For your man here with the long face. It’s his first day out in a long time. He’s a fan of the Dublin crowd.”
Joey Mad tapped a shoulder in the crowd. Kathleen Minogue elbowed Kilmartin in the ribs.
“Will you look?” said Kathleen. “It’s the other one! The one who used to play with The Goners-Gabby Mac!”
She turned bright, excited eyes on Minogue. For the first time in nearly two weeks, Minogue felt the weight slip a little. Last night was the first night he had slept more than four hours since returning from Clare.
“He looks like a goner, all right,” Kilmartin observed. “The narrowback. Get a real job, pal.”
Kathleen turned to Maura Kilmartin and Minogue saw his wife’s hand splayed down on Maura’s forearm.
“God, Maura, it’s great! He’s going to do it! Fab, isn’t it?”
A fiddle launched into a rousing intro. It was soon joined by a guitar and the hollow thuds of a bodhran. Maura and Kathleen were standing up now, trying to see into the crowd.
“Sit down, can’t ye?” Kilmartin hissed.
The crowd seemed to heave with the music as Joey Mad began to howl out the words.
We sat in Bewleys Restaurant there,
We talked and laughed without a care.
“You know, says she, the time just flies
I thought how small talk always lies.
Joey Mad began to shout out the chorus. Kilmartin rolled his eyes.
Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,
But I’m a desperate man.
The Chief Inspector leaned in and shouted into Minogue’s ear. “At least he got that last part right. It is fucking desperate!” Minogue looked at Kathleen and Maura. They were swaying from side to side in their seats, clapping gently, smiling. The whole pub seemed to be lurching somewhere with the music. He felt his heart was beating in an empty space. Other voices joined in louder as Joey Mad bit into another verse. Maybe he’d be better off outside, away from the crush and the racket.
What were we then, sixteen or so?
Why did you leave, I’d like to know?
Escape, run, travel-I began.
But you’re back, says she, each chance you can.
Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,
But I’m a desperate man.
Someone whooped. Kilmartin stood and waded into the crowd. Kathleen, swaying, caught Minogue’s eye and winked. Something gave way in his chest then. The music seemed to grow even louder. But as the fiddler let the instrument free and it wandered away from the melody, the guitar fought with the fiddle, soaring and falling with it. The bodhran player was up to the hunt and he smiled and closed his eyes while his hands became a blur. The mob seemed to surge as it moved, egging on the musicians. Kathleen’s face had taken on colour, Minogue noted. He must write to Daithi tomorrow. She felt his stare and turned. For several seconds her face took on that frown he remembered from that day they’d had a puncture high up over the Burren. There was something beyond anxiety in that look, he believed. He raised an eyebrow at her. He felt the muscles in his cheeks begin to give way. God, he thought, he seemed to be finally climbing out of this. He leaned in toward her and grasped her hand.
“You’re the wild woman now to drag me up here. It’s like cold water thrown in your face.”
“Had to be done,” she said. Her eyes had lost the fear and they glistened now. “You were turned in on yourself too long, man.”
“We must come here again when it’s as mad, so.”
Kilmartin was back with a clutch of drinks in his hands. He stooped in over the table and placed the glasses down firmly. For a moment, Minogue thought of tagged exhibits being positioned on the table under the bench.
“I had to
walk on a few head-cases to get to the bloody bar,” he shouted into Minogue’s ear.
Pilgrim, exile, tourist, son,
Leaving here I thought I’d won,
Next time I’m back, I’ll bring a sign
Hey, while I’m here, this town is mine!
Voices roared throughout the pub. Still Minogue heard Joey Mad spit out the words.
Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,
But I’m a desperate man!
“Jesus,” Kilmartin broke in between Kathleen and Minogue. “People buy that, you know!”
More whoops erupted and the fiddle returned to race with the guitar.
“They pay good money to hear this clown tell ’em something like that!” Kilmartin’s mockery stopped abruptly.
“Christ,” he said, too softly for Minogue to hear, but the Inspector turned his head in the direction Kilmartin was looking. John Tynan, Commissioner of Gardai, raised a glass of amber-coloured liquid in wry salute. Kathleen had noticed too. She leaned into her husband.
“Are you in trouble? Are we in trouble, I mean?”
Minogue shrugged. He picked up his drink and headed into the crowd. Kilmartin followed. Blocked for several moments by two women executing an impromptu two-step to the repeated chorus, Minogue turned to his colleague.
“How come he’s here?”
“Well, he phoned earlier in the day. Asked if you were around or if I’d be in touch with you. I happened to mention that you-well, Kathleen, I mean-had invited us up to this madhouse for a jar. Social, like.”
Minogue probed for sincerity in Kilmartin’s eyes before making his way toward the Garda Commissioner.
Tynan stepped out the front door of the pub and into the yard. Minogue and Kilmartin ambled with him toward the wall that flanked the Barnacullia road below.
“Lovely,” said Tynan.
“Before your man inside started his shouting and screeching,” said Kilmartin.
“The view, I was thinking,” said Tynan.