All souls imm-4
Page 37
The Commissioner leaned his elbows on the wall and looked out to the lights mapping the coastline of Dublin. North of the city, a plane’s winking lights floated down to meet the waiting airport lights. Behind them came the muffled rumble of the pub. The door opened and blew music out into the night, stealing it back as it slammed shut.
“A lot of our tax-free artists, musicians and the like, live up around here,” Tynan observed.
Minogue guessed that Tynan had attended parties in such houses.
“Social Welfare,” Minogue murmured. “Sort of grows on you.”
A trill sounded from somewhere on Tynan’s upper body.
“Excuse me,” he said, and he pulled out a telephone from inside his coat. He fingered a switch and turned away. Kilmartin elbowed Minogue and winked. Minogue felt like punching his colleague hard in the shoulder.
“Give me a half an hour, then,” Tynan said. The door of the pub opened again.
… a desperate town,
…and I’m a…
Tynan dropped the phone down the inside of his coat.
“Apparently I’m late for something. So says Rachel.”
Why come up here then, Minogue thought. Tynan’s clairvoyance startled the Inspector.
“I heard you’d be doing some of your recuperating up here tonight,” he said. “So I decided to drop by.”
Kilmartin took a drink from his glass, shuffled and looked out over the lights.
“Well. How is it with you?”
“Everything takes time.”
“You got off to a false start there in the County Hospital in Ennis,” Tynan said.
Minogue had been waiting for Kilmartin’s gibe about his mad rush to get out of County Clare but it had yet to be uttered.
“I didn’t realise the shape I was really in,” Minogue said. “It was almost like a dream, I remember thinking.”
“A bad business,” said Tynan. “But you did right.”
Minogue wanted to contest this. He had already detected in Tynan’s gaze that the Commissioner knew something about him from talking to others. Minogue had spoken but once to the Commissioner, when Tynan had phoned him at home.
“Well, now. Did Jim pass on the word to you?”
Kilmartin was now swaying slightly from the knees. He did not look away from the lights below.
“No.”
“The Squad stays as is,” said Tynan. “That’s what I decided.”
The Commissioner turned to Kilmartin with an eyebrow up.
“After all, I’m top dog. What I say goes.”
Minogue noticed that Kilmartin had stopped swaying. Tynan sipped at his whiskey and turned back to Minogue.
“Had a call from Ennis,” Tynan resumed. “Superintendent Russell.”
He took another sip and his gaze stayed fixed, like Kilmartin’s, on the lights.
“Says hello to you, by the way.”
“Very nice of him, I’m sure,” said Minogue.
“Yes. Tom says you should get in touch with him the next time you’re coming down to Clare on business.”
“I was on me holidays,” Minogue said.
Tynan seemed to ignore Minogue’s qualification. “Before you leave Dublin, he was at pains to note. ”
“I believe I know what you mean.”
“What Tom Russell meant,” Tynan corrected, “was this. Are you going down on another trip in the near future, maybe?”
Minogue thought of the County Hospital, of Mick and Maura and Eoin in visiting. Mick had smuggled in a half-bottle of whiskey. Maura had slipped as she had kissed her brother-in-law and landed on him. They’re talking about the farm at last, she had whispered in his ear. She phoned Kathleen a week later with the news that Eoin had persuaded his father to apply for money to drain the four boggy fields, the Kilshanny quarter as the family knew them. They’d had an agricultural adviser in walking the fields with them. They’d visited the bank.
Minogue thought of Crossan walking from the bed to the window, back to the bed, while he talked about Jamesy Bourke’s funeral, the guns found in a field behind the Howards’ house, the arrests around Clare. Back in Dublin, Minogue had spent a day mooching around the Art Gallery, hiding in Bewleys. He had admitted to no one how shaky he was. Dan Howard’s face, looking empty and older and lined in places Minogue couldn’t remember noticing from before, had been on the front page of The Irish Times two days in a row.
The Inspector had found the box of photos in the wardrobe. He had taken the photos out of the box and kept them in his pocket. He hoped that if he tried harder or sneaked up suddenly on the snapshots, he would spot some semblance of the smiling man from his sleep in the grainy pictures of Eamonn. When he got home that evening, Kathleen told him that Crossan had phoned again. The lawyer wanted to know if Minogue would be coming down for Sheila Howard’s funeral. Minogue went first to the cabinet under the sink, then to the front room where he had thought about Crossan’s question for almost an hour.
“I think not.”
Tynan nodded.
“There’s an article in the Independent,” said Tynan. “Very catchy title too. Credit to a journalist by the name of Hynes, co-written with another one. Do you know Hynes, Jim?”
“He’s been a boil on me arse for an undue number of years,” said Kilmartin with little malice.
“Must have a good source,” said Tynan. “Sharp info. He speaks well of your Squad. Very well indeed.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” said Kilmartin. “It’s only the truth.”
“I suppose that they get the Independent down in Ennis or thereabouts,” Tynan said. Kilmartin gave the Commissioner a knowing look.
“‘Out with the old Guard, in with the new,’” said Tynan. “Catchy, isn’t it?” Kilmartin grunted.
“Well,” Tynan sighed. “Just thought I’d drop by. Not often I get the chance.” He drew the lapels of his coat tighter.
“Oh,” he said, and turned to Minogue. “I asked Jim if you’d be long away.”
Minogue frowned. Kilmartin began to sway again, but he did not take his eyes from the view to return Minogue’s glare. Tynan resumed his prodding.
“Told me he didn’t know. You, ah, hadn’t told him yet.”
The Inspector looked beyond Kilmartin to the spectacle of the night city below. The music had stopped. A door opened and the three policemen looked back at two men laughing raucously in the yard. The dark mass of the mountain above the pub seemed closer, larger. Hoey heading for Africa. How things turn out, Hoey had said to him in Bewleys the other day. Hoey hadn’t looked at him when he had said that, he recalled. Minogue turned back to the city view.
The lights of the city fell into no overall pattern that he could discern. He let his eyes drift up a little. The few stars he could make out in the city’s dull glow did not follow any pattern either. How the hell did people see chariots and horses and ploughs and goddesses up there? But as he looked, Minogue was startled to find that more stars seemed to be appearing. How did that happen? Kilmartin cleared his throat.
“Two weeks or so, I imagine,” Minogue heard himself say. “Then I’m back.”
Kilmartin turned. Tynan nodded. Minogue emptied his glass.
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