Unholy Ground imm-2

by John Brady

  Michael Joseph Joyce was sitting alone in a room on the upper floor of the station. The door to the room had been locked. The Garda who led them upstairs called himself Tobin.

  "How's it going on this thing anyway?" he asked as he clumped slowly up the stairs ahead of them.

  Tobin cast a glance back at Minogue. The look on Keating's face drew his attention then. Tobin read what he suspected from Keating's wide eyes. He tucked his head into his shoulders, averted his eyes and made speedier progress up the last of the stairs. He rattled the lock as he was unlocking the door. An unconscious gesture of authority to the nervous man within, Minogue thought. A heavy, noisy man in a uniform. Not Minogue's cup of tea, this Tobin who had been devoured by his uniform. The place smelled mothbally, damp. Minogue stayed Tobin's arm before he had turned the key fully.

  "Joyce has been here since this morning, am I right?" asked Minogue.

  "Yes, sir," Tobin answered. "We put the heavy word on him when we brought him home last night. Begob if he wasn't sober and dressed up in his finery waiting on the squad car this morning. Shaking like a leaf he was. The DTs, I'll bet."

  Minogue fixed a languid smile on Tobin.

  "A spot of tea for him too then, Garda. Lots of sugar, if you please. Any chance of buns in the village here? My colleague Detective Keating and I frightened one another on the way here with the way our bellies were growling. We've had no dinner, you see."

  Tobin headed back down the stairs. Minogue knew by Keating's face that Tobin had given him the look of incredulity which he didn't dare show Minogue. Minogue rested his hand on the doorknob. The room smelled of woodsmoke and unwashed clothes. Joyce was standing by the window. He was indeed nervous, his hands in and out of his pockets, reaching for buttons on his shirt, touching his belt, rubbing his nose.

  Joyce had the puffy, tired face of a heavy drinker. Watery eyes darted from Minogue to Keating to the door. Minogue noticed a faint smell of shaving soap. Joyce had several nicks on his neck. Although he was wearing the jacket of a suit over what had been a white shirt, Joyce was shivering slightly. He ran his hand quickly over a full head of red hair, which might have owed its styling inspiration to a 1955 Elvis Presley. Joyce looked out under his eyebrows at the two detectives.

  "Mornin', sirs," he said hoarsely. He licked his upper lip with rapid side-to-side stabs of his tongue.

  "A poor one, I'm thinking. I'm Sergeant Minogue. This is Detective Keating."

  Joyce looked plaintively to the closing door.

  "I have to go to the toilet, sirs. I'm here all the morning," Joyce said.

  Minogue nodded to Keating. A fidgety Joyce followed Keating out the door. Minogue saw only two chairs, one with a bockety leg, to go with the formica-topped table. He waited by the window for the pair to return, his own mind adrift as he gazed at the teeming rain on the glass. Tobin arrived with a tray before Joyce appeared at the door. He eyed the shifty Joyce as Minogue directed him to a chair. Joyce sat on the edge of the chair, blinking.

  "But now, sirs, how is it ye'd be wanting to see the likes of me?"

  Minogue had insisted on Keating taking the other chair. He slung a leg over the corner of the table and held out a cup of tea to Joyce. Joyce's jaw dropped.

  "Deal out your own sugar," Minogue said.

  Joyce spooned four heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into his cup, spilling half of the last spoonful in transit.

  "We want to know what you were doing at that house the other night," said Minogue.

  "On my oath, I was up looking to the horse, sir, and nothing else, and I went up the lane a bit and I had my eye out for the horse. I needn't have looked far, but I had a bit of drink on me and I don't deny that. Sure wasn't the creature tethered up to the gate and he was after eating all around him, but if you-"

  "Hold on there. Hold your horses," Minogue raised his hand.

  "And here I am locked up in the barracks all morning-"

  "Look it," Minogue said sharply. "Stop running away with yourself here." Joyce's nostrils went in and out like bellows. He could not stop from spilling more tea. Minogue reached out, grasped his forearm and guided the tea to the table.

  "Didn't I tell the peelers last night to get the man of the house and he'd know me?" Joyce blurted.

  "Who?"

  "Mr Combs. I told them to knock on the door and t'would be all fixed up as right as rain and they'd see what I was at and that there was no harm to it."

  Minogue knew from Keating's stillness that he was startled, too. Minogue spoke very slowly now.

  "Well now. Would you care to telephone Mr Combs now and we can clear it all up?"

  "Sure wouldn't I be after doing that if I could have?" Joyce replied, a little less agitated now.

  "Well, why didn't you then?"

  "I don't have the reading and the writing, sirs, no more than I have a telly-phone. If ye'll find his phone number in the book, I'll phone him this instant and he'll tell ye what ye want to know."

  "What did the Garda say to you last night when you said you wanted to knock on the door so as Mr Combs could vouch for you?"

  "Didn't he laugh at me and tell his pal that I was arse-over-tip drunk!"

  "You remember everything that was said and done last night?"

  "Well, I do get a bit shaky every now and then, but I know what I know. Mr Combs will tell you, so he will. If he wasn't at home the other night, then he'll be home today and he's the man'll set things to rights. A shocking nice man is Mr Combs. He's after forgetting to untie the horse, but sure that's no big thing. Oh, yes, that's my horse above in his field, with one of his legs gone to the bad and him getting it tangled in barbed wire. I do go up and have a look at the horse every now and then, and sure enough the animal is in the best of fettle now with a field full of grass inside of him and oats and the divil knows what else that Mr Combs does feed him. And he paid for the vet, too."

  This overtaxed Keating. He looked up from his notebook and pointed his pencil at Joyce. Joyce gulped some tea.

  "Mr Combs fed your horse and let it graze in one of his fields?" Keating asked in a tone of open disbelief.

  "Bits of barley and molasses he did, something I never did in my life. True as God, the animal must have thought he'd gone on to paradise. I would have et the stuff myself," Joyce said with new assurance.

  "So this horse of yours went to the vet, was fed and watered by Mr Combs, not to say pampered entirely," Minogue said, "and he let the horse roam around that field and graze where it pleased?"

  "He did, sirs."

  Tethered, Minogue wondered. Had the horse tried to escape before? Bad-tempered perhaps?

  "He had a soft spot for horses, so he did," Joyce added. "He told me once that he had a pony and him growing up, years and years ago in England. And that that pony was the best pal he'd ever had and could hope to have. Did you ever hear the like of that?"

  Joyce showed brown teeth in a nervous smile.

  "Tell you the truth, I think Mr Combs tied up the horse near the gate so as he could pet it and what have you. Don't tell him I said that. Sure an old man couldn't be chasing a horse around the field, could he? Sure that same horse was fit and able to come home with me last week. But I think the poor man likes the bit of company. I wanted to sell the horse last week, and that's what I went to tell Mr Combs. I hadn't the heart to tell him until yesterday. The drink, you see. Didn't he buy a gorgeous bit and bridle for the animal, to dress it up, like? Presents, like."

  "Presents for the horse, your horse," Keating said in a monotone.

  "That's the way of the world, isn't it, sirs. Everybody's different in their own way. And there's no explaining it in the end. There's people that love animals and there's people that don't…"

  Keating rubbed his eyes. He laid his pencil on the table to get a better knuckle into his eye. Minogue watched him massage his writing hand then, stretching out the fingers, flexing them. The sound of the rain was a constant dull percussion on the roof.

  "Jesus and Mary and all the
saints and archangels will tell ye that Michael Joseph Joyce had no mischief on his mind and, please God, never will have again. A man can have enough trouble and run-ins with the law in his life, and he can get sick of the badness. Sure aren't we all the same, sirs, all trying to keep the arse in our trousers and have a roof over our heads? Aren't we all the same? Under our skins, don't you see…?"

  Pleased with his logic, Joyce sat back in his chair.

  "And can't I tell them, when I go home, that it was all a confusion like, and ye perhaps thinking I was a blackguard and up to divilment?" he added. "Oh, there's nothing like visit to the police barracks with hard-working gentlemen like yourself to waken a man up and put him to rights. Even if it is the wrong man ye have," Joyce added earnestly.

  Barracks, Minogue was thinking. Gentlemen. Sirs. Language and suspicions that belonged in another age when more than the tinkers of Ireland were outcasts in the ditch by the roadside. The servility was a foil to conceal the contempt it was bred from. He felt Keating looking at him now, wanting him to pull the cork on Joyce.

  "We'll be back in a moment, Michael Joseph," Minogue murmured. "Wait here like a good man. We'll not be long."

  Keating followed Minogue into the hallway.

  "Well?" Minogue looked at Keating.

  Keating shrugged. He was a bored policeman with a sore hand.

  "God, he has a desperate mouth on him for talk. When he wasn't putting me to sleep, he was driving me up the walls with the blather out of him. But not a hint of any homo thing."

  "But he never once makes a slip," said Minogue. "Never once lets on that he knows Combs is dead. I think if he had his way, he'd march up up to Combs' place now so that we could talk to Combs and that'd be that," said Minogue with an edge of irony.

  "You know," Keating began wearily, "the way he talks about Combs and himself having a drink in Combs' kitchen every now and then, it doesn't sound like he's telling a pack of lies."

  "I can see that, too," Minogue agreed. "Well, after tea when Mrs H wouldn't be around to know… and be scandalised. I'm not saying that I buy Joyce's yarn though."

  "He did say that Combs let him into the house once or twice and even gave him a bottle of whiskey an odd time. Passed him a tenner for his family several times," Keating said, squinting at his notebook.

  "I wonder how much of the tenner she saw," added Keating. "The bottle of whiskey was no kindness to them."

  "But well-meant," said Minogue. He was surprised to find himself leaning out to catch a fragment of Combs' personality, his open-handedness, lest it plummet to the ground after Keating's rebuke.

  "But don't you think he's twigged that we're not here in Stepaside him about the weather? He must know about Combs," Keating said.

  "Travellers don't be rushing out to buy the papers or listen to the news, now," Minogue cautioned. "We can't assume he knows."

  Neither man said a word for several seconds. Joyce's grandiloquence was not a ploy to delude Keating and himself in particular, Minogue believed. Rather, his talk was the reflex of a man who moved warily around such prickly institutions of the settled Irish as policemen and publicans. The elaborate flattery and invoking of saints and angels was the language of a different century, a different mind. Joyce had adopted the wheedling way of the powerless peasant without a thought that he, no more than his forbears, could ever be any other person dealing with peelers. His whorls of self-pity and whining were the Trojan horses which carried an ancient and enduring hostility within. But that did not mean Joyce was lying.

  Another burrowing notion elbowed its way into Minogue's attention: this odd acquaintance between a retired Briton and a traveller somehow fitted Minogue's picture of Combs. This surprised Minogue when he allowed the truth of it to settle on him. For the life of him, he could not backtrack through that fog, back to a clear and detailed "Mr Combs," which had to be somewhere in his head for Minogue to be able to think this way at all in the first place. Maybe it was those drawing in Combs' house, the signs of a local interest. A passion?

  "I'll tell you this much," Keating said quietly, "he hasn't told us everything. It's a bit like a good yarn, you know, how decent Combs was to help him out and the rest of it. But he didn't go beyond that sort of thing."

  Minogue gave Keating an inquiring glance.

  "I mean some substance to the man he says he knew. Combs," Keating said hesitantly, as though the school toughs might jeer him after showing an interest during poetry class. "Maybe he's telling us what he thinks we want to hear. I'm not saying that he's fibbing or anything. It may be that, like you say, he doesn't know it's Combs we're on about."

  "I think you're very shrewd entirely, Detective Keating," Minogue said absently. "But what way do you think we should go now?"

  "I think we should tell him, sir," Keating replied without hesitation.

  "And watch very closely how he reacts?"

  Keating nodded ponderously.

  "And watch very closely how he reacts, sir." spacebarthing

  They had re-entered the room to find Joyce looking around with darting, bird-like glances. Now, he was perched on the edge of his chair… as though hunkering by a fire, Minogue thought. He seemed to be keeping himself taut by clasping his knees with his hands. Minogue knew Joyce didn't believe that Combs was dead.

  "Ah, no. No," Joyce whispered finally. "He couldn't be. Sure didn't I call to see him last night?"

  Minogue said nothing. Joyce seemed to be on the brink of a denial or on the very edge of blurting something out, but he was stopping himself at the last instant. At each surge, his body leaned forward slightly as if to breast a wave and out with his disbelief.

  "Ye are trick-acting with me," Joyce said accusingly. He would not look up from the floor now.

  "We're not, Michael Joseph," murmured Minogue. "Mr Combs was murdered."

  "Ye're trying to get me into trouble."

  Joyce's voice had a rising tone of apprehension to it.

  "Not a bit of it," Minogue continued. "We're going to find out who did it. And put him in jail for it. That's our job, do you see?"

  "Someone is trying to do me a bad turn and bring me down," Joyce mumbled. He looked up suddenly at Minogue.

  "Trying to put a traveller away in jail, so it is. The whole world is up against the traveller," he said slowly. His watery eyes had settled on Minogue's. Their new intensity showed that he had cast off the protective air of servility.

  "You're telling me someone has gone and done away with a man that had the time of day and the decency to bid good-day to the likes of Michael Joseph Joyce, when there's thousands of people born and bred in Ireland would cross the road sooner than say good morning or good evening to me, or so much as walk on the same footpath as myself…?"

  Joyce was almost keening now. It had an eerie solemnity to it. Minogue sensed that Joyce was beginning to believe them. Keating was visibly impatient.

  "Listen now, Michael Joseph," Minogue interrupted. "Did Mr Combs ever suggest anything to you about his friends?"

  "Friends? No, never did. He never mentioned a thing about them'? I couldn't help but think to myself that he didn't have any."

  "Men friends?" said Minogue. Joyce frowned.

  "What are you saying?"

  "Any idea in your mind that Mr Combs was a homosexual?"

  Joyce sat back abruptly and stared at Minogue.

  "That sort of thing? Men pretending they're women sort of thing? You must be joking. Mr Combs was a perfect gentleman, God rest him."

  "And he never so much as hinted anything to you in that line?" Keating asked quickly. "Him giving you money and drink. What for? Didn't he want a little something for his troubles?"

  "That's a dirty thing to say. And ye policemen?"

  Tobin appeared in the doorway and pointed to Minogue. As good a time as any to leave Keating to do his work, Minogue shrugged. With a bit of theatre not totally alien to him in his domestic life, Minogue stood and addressed Keating.

  "Detective Keating, would you ca
rry on in my absence with Mr Joyce here? And Mr Joyce will furnish exact details and information about what he knows concerning Mr Combs. Are you with me on that, Michael Joseph?"

  Joyce nodded. He rubbed his palm down his face and slouched back in the chair. He was sweating slightly. His face was even more lumpy and tired-looking.

  "Every detail now," Minogue added. "Nothing left out."

  Joyce looked with a bleak apprehension as Keating rearranged his chair opposite him. He looked up under his lick of hair at Minogue, aware now that his performances might not derail these peelers after all. He nodded again at Minogue.

  Tobin closed the door behind Minogue. He had a cigarette going, cupped in his hand behind his back. His tie was loosened and the top button of his blue Garda's shirt was undone. He had meaty forearms.

  "Divils for talk, hah, Sergeant?" he said, producing a packet of Majors from his pocket.

  "No thanks," Minogue said.

  "Once you leave them sitting on their own for a while here they get to being jittery."

  "You say there's someone on the telephone for me?"

  "Oh, yes sir." Tobin made for the stairs. "You can take it in the interview room below."

  "Thanks very much, Garda Tobin. Now what can three hungry men here visiting the village of Stepaside do about a bit of grub? Nothing too substantial on account of it being half-way to the tea-time. A plate of chips maybe?"

  He watched Tobin lumber heavily down the hall before picking up the phone. He listened to Eilis and then wrote the telephone number she called out.

  "Moore? M-O-O-R-E?"

  "Yes, your honour."

  While he waited for the hotel to switch him through to Moore's room, Minogue let a phrase circle slowly in his afternoon mind. Indecent haste. Could hardly say it to this fella though; he was just doing his job. As the bishop said to the actress? Someone had to do it, sooner or later.

  Minogue tried to remember his own odd grief at his father's funeral, the macabre sorting out and handling that was part of the ceremonials. Patrick Minogue, age fifty-seven. Minogue's mother holding out jumpers and socks and shirts and shoes and jackets belonging to her husband. Would they fit you, Matt? Or maybe you could get them taken in or altered? Great wear still left in these boots, hardly used at all, two pound ten in Limerick at the sales last year. Would they be your size? Jumpers that she had knitted for all the family, elbows patched, the tobacco-sweat-home smell of his father bonded to each fibre. The man who had chastised and loved him, worked alongside him in the fields, the man he had listened to in the pub, watched at the table, heard snore at night, fought against and cursed, implacable and infrequently gentle, but most often with a horse or a dog… Minogue had been invited to slip into these clothes and make them his own.