by John Brady
"Who is he?"
"Man by the name of Joyce. A tinker."
"Michael Joseph Joyce?"
"The very man."
"What's he doing in Shankill station?"
"He was in a row in a pub here in Shankill and we took him in."
"Is it just drunk and disorderly with him?"
"No, it isn't," Dwyer said as if a conclusion had been reached. "Matter of fact he is up for assault and battery. A client in the pub. Joyce opened his head with a bottle. The man needs stitches all over his face. Joyce'll appear in court in the morning. It's a mighty serious business. The man could have lost an eye."
"Is he sober now, or out-and-out drunk?"
"Well, he can talk up the divil's own story, so he can't be much under the influence. Says that the client passed comments about tinkers in public houses.
Asked him who his wife was shacking up with while he was in the pub."
"So what does he want with me?"
"He says that there's something he forgot to tell you when he was talking to you the other day."
"He didn't mention that he was going to stretch someone in a pub with a bottle in the face," Minogue muttered.
"Ha, ha, I suppose he didn't at that. But he says it's terrible important and that you'd be needing to know right away. And if we didn't tell you, it'd be on our own heads, so it would. If he was really langers, I would've done nothing. But when he says Murder Squad, he got me to thinking, do you follow me?"
Minogue, a Clareman and thus not normally disposed to following any suggestion made to him by any party from the neighbouring county of Limerick, conceded that he did.
"I'll be by in a half hour," Minogue said.
Kathleen was turning out the light in the living room.
It was gone eleven when Minogue, Joyce and the Garda left Shankill station. Flahive, the Garda, chainsmoked as he drove. Joyce and Minogue sat in the back of the squad-car. Once off the Bray Road and its lights, Minogue could see that the night sky was still clear. He found The Plough well into the middle of the sky.
"There's no chance in the world, is there?" Joyce said.
"No. Not something like this. This is a serious charge, Michael Joseph. The man has stitches up and down his face."
"And him after abusing myself and Josie?" Joyce snapped.
"He didn't mean it personally."
"Do you mean to tell me that he tells everyone he meets the same thing, is it?"
This was a changed Joyce, Minogue reflected. Something had given way in him, struck out. Bitterness, a lifetime.
"And I suppose you'll be telling me that I would have been better off if I had have been as drunk as a lord, too drunk to hear him?" Joyce added scornfully.
"Or take a bottle to him."
He heard Joyce snort. Joyce was sober. He sat upright in the seat. Minogue could almost feel a heat of resentment from him. Where was the timid and wheedling Joyce of yesterday?
"What'll me wife and childer do and me locked up in the barracks?" Joyce declared.
Minogue had no pleasing answer. Flahive braked hard for the corkscrew bend at the bottom of Bride's Glen Road. Joyce's caravan was less than a mile up the hill.
"And all the help I'm giving you this evening?" Joyce tried.
"Help you should have given me straightaway yesterday," said Minogue sharply. "You were a foolish man entirely not to tell me about this letter the first time I talked to you. So don't be acting the maggot with me now."
"Didn't I have a few drinks on me and I left the letter in a jacket of mine? I would have tore up that letter and scattered it to the four winds after me finding out what happened to poor Mr Combs. To be mixed up in that class of thing, I says to myself. You can't trust any but your own, we often say, and it's true."
"But you didn't tear it up?" Minogue interrupted.
"Mr Combs might have told someone that a letter was on the way and that t'would be expected. Quick like. I wanted rid of that letter like it was the divil's cloak, let me tell you. So far as I might know it might have been a life-or-death thing, and Mickey Joyce shouldn't have any more truck with a poor man who was after getting himself murdered…"
Life-or-death, Minogue's mind echoed. Talked to Joyce on Monday. Middle of the day. Ball was killed on the Tuesday, near midnight. The letter must have gone to a Dublin address.
"Not even one letter you'd remember off the words on the envelope?" Minogue tried. "An A, a B… any letters?"
Joyce shook his head conclusively.
"I wish I had learned a bit of… " his words trailed off, the head still shaking, slower now.
"When did he give it to you?"
"A week ago, I suppose. We were after having a few drinks and he had the jitters a bit, I was thinking to myself. I didn't like to be asking him what his business was, but I couldn't help noticing he wasn't in the best of fettle."
"Did he talk about anything that was bothering him?"
"No, he didn't. But he had a funny look to him. He took the letter out of his pocket, and he waved it at me with a kind of look on his face. I don't know what you'd call it-"
"Go on."
Joyce took a deep breath and sighed.
"He waved the letter around a bit and he says to me, 'Do you know what's in this?' We had a few drinks on us now, I don't mind telling you. So naturally, I tells him I didn't. 'That,' says he,'that is like setting a pack of dogs on the loose.' Looking at the letter like it was something very strange, not bits of paper at all… I says nothing."
"Michael Joseph. Did Mr Combs know whether you could read and write?"
Joyce frowned his puzzlement and scratched his head.
"I don't know… I suppose. He asked me once what I made of the state of the world, me being a traveller. In a nice way, you understand. I think I told him that I knew nothing about the affairs of people out in the world and that I didn't need to be concerning myself about goings-on like-"
"What did he do or say when you said that?"
"How can I remember that? He was always kind of nice, like, he wouldn't talk down to you. I suppose he didn't take much notice."
"Did he say anything else, then? When he gave you the letter?"
"I can't think of what… and me leaving, with the letter in me pocket… He had the look on him again, like he was sober all of a sudden. To tell you the truth I had the willies a bit and me coming home, thinking about the way Mr Combs looked. He said something about boats, I don't know what… He said his boat had run aground. Then says something about the holy ground to me. Like it might have been funny if he hadn't have been looking so shook. You know the tune, 'The Holy Ground?'"
"Boats?"
"Like a saying, I suppose. Then some other queer expression about a boat on fire…"
"Burning your boats?"
Joyce looked up abruptly. "That's it. The very thing. What does that mean at all?"
Minogue had no answer. Something, his thoughts nagged sluggishly- something- something Combs did, something he had. Gave Joyce a letter to post-but why not post it himself? Something of value; value to whom? No. Combs had given Joyce money, but would he really have trusted him with something valuable, given the temptations of larceny or drink? Minogue's thoughts tugged at a line, bobbed and then went slack again. Nothing. "Burning your boats." Wasn't that Homer? The Greeks stranded before the walls of Troy… a last gamble. His tiredness rumbled into irritation again.
Joyce's wife was standing in the doorway of the caravan. She pushed children in behind her. A crawling infant escaped her, scurrying between her legs. She noticed it an instant before the child made to go down the step. Josie Joyce gathered the child and planted it on her hip without taking her eyes from the squad-car.
"What have you done?" she cried out. "What have you done tonight and you with handcuffs on you, you big ujit?"
She began weeping. It turned to keening, then pleading. It set off a child somewhere out of Minogue's sight, at the far end of the caravan. Joyce told his wife to shut up.
Flahive stood against the bonnet of the car with his arms folded. The interior of the caravan was lit by a gas lantern hissing on the kitchen table. Joyce's wife had begun waffling again.
"Don't be carrying on, woman," Joyce hissed.
The glow of the city's lights came faintly over the hedges to the north, obscuring the stars there. Minogue sensed something moving under the caravan. He looked down at the collie, which rested its front paws just inside the shadow.
Joyce jostled by his wife. Minogue followed him in. The inside of the caravan was tidy and crowded. It smelled of smoke and cooking, bed-warmth, child's piss. Joyce blundered to a built-in cupboard beside what passed for a sofa. Children scampered under clothes at the other end of the caravan.
Joyce tore out plastic bags and threw them to the floor. They seemed to be full of clothes. He reached his arms in and drew out a bridle and noseband. He stepped back, kicked the bags at his feet and thrust the straps angrily at Minogue.
Josie Joyce's jaw dropped when she saw Minogue take out his penknife. The children stood silent and gaping like their mother.
"What in the name of God is he doing with that…?" she began.
"This was a present to ye from Mr Combs?" Minogue asked without looking up. The straps had been machine-stitched. The stiff leather was tight and creaking.
"And he said ye could keep it after ye took the horse back, am I right?" Minogue went on.
"I suppose," said Josie, darting glances from her husband to Minogue. "But if it's ours, it's ours. T'was a present. You can't be destroying it."
Minogue could not safely tease his knife under the stitches. He snorted with frustration.
"Damn it to hell. Have you a good sharp knife, Missus, one with a point to it?"
Josie Joyce's eyes bulged wider.
"Go on with you," Joyce muttered.
Minogue worked the point of the knife into the stitches and began slicing them. He levered the two straps open.
"That's a fierce amount of cash money for tackle the likes of that," Josie began.
A small plastic sachet escaped Minogue's palm and fell to the floor.
"What in the name of…" Joyce frowned. Minogue picked up the sachet. He felt his chest expanding, his heart beating in a huge space. When he tried to talk, his words came out in a hoarse whisper.
"This, Michael Joseph, this little thing is what's going to put the bit between our teeth, man."
He held the sealed packet against the propane light. The negatives were stacked perhaps four deep, singly, in two groups.
"Guard, come in here, will you? Be quick, man."
Flahive appeared in the doorway, his nose wrinkled in distaste at having to enter a tinker's caravan.
"Get the station to phone the Technical Bureau. Tell 'em it's me and that I want Photographic and Video. I have black-and-white negatives to be developed and blown up."
"Negatives, sir?" said Flahive warily.
"And I'm going to leave them in their wrapping until they get them."
"And you want these things developed, is it?"
"Yep. And blown up, man. But big." spacebarthing
Minogue did not hear Kathleen coming down the stairs.
"I thought it was Daithi in late," she whispered. "But sure he's in bed hours already."
Her hair was down, an arm holding her dressing-gown together.
Minogue had helped himself to two sizeable glasses of Jameson. He was not tired and he did not feel drunk. He had prints of all the negatives in his lap, along with a plastic magnifying glass.
"It's three o'clock in the morning. What in the name of God are you doing?… What are those? Photos? Are you gone dotty? They're not photos of people at all. What is it, bits of paper?"
"It's something very unusual," Minogue began. "A very, very delicate matter entirely. And I'm not sure what to make of it at all," he began. The drink had had its effects, he realised then. It was too much to explain to Kathleen now.
"Can't you sleep on it?"
"I'm only just home from town this last fifteen minutes. I can't sleep with this stuff in me head. I don't know if I can swallow the thing as real at all. That Combs man that was murdered."
Kathleen shivered.
"Can't it wait until tomorrow?"
Minogue noted the edge to her question.
"It'll have to."
Minogue had checked the streets which Combs mentioned. If this was raving fiction about the Second World War, then Combs had gone to a lot of trouble to get his names and places right. Most were now in East Berlin. Unter den Linden he'd heard of before. Combs called Kufursten Damm the Ku-damm, something Minogue had also heard of before. The Rathausstrasse, where he claimed to have made the broadcasts from, had been levelled by bombing. And that man that was betrayed on purpose, Vogel. Combs thought that Vogel's family had lived in East Berlin. He wrote that he never met Vogel but only heard of his fate after he himself had gotten out. After "Russians" he had written "our allies!!!" and underlined the words several times. But Minogue kept returning to the name Costello. Combs had had his dates right, but he couldn't have known for sure about Costello's killing. All he could do was repeat Ball's hints about Costello and his grisly fate.
Kathleen eyed the bottle of whiskey now dangerously at large, out of the safety of the sink cupboard.
"Once in the blue moon, Kathleen," he murmured.
He laboured to rise from the chair. Kathleen waited by the door. William Grimes, had he heard that name before? No, just the illusion of familiarity brought on by a few drinks.
"Are you still expecting to get up early?" Kathleen whispered at the foot of the stairs. Minogue did not miss the reproach. He scooped up the note he had left for Daithi.
"I'll have to get started on this very early tomorrow, and that's a fact," he replied, following his wife up the stairs. They tiptoed to their bedroom. Hooking his thumb into his socks, sitting on the edge of the bed, Minogue smelled the sugary sourness of his whiskey breath. Maybe he should be hanging off the phone downstairs trying to get ahold of Corrigan or a Superintendent or two. Whatever about three o'clock in the morning, they'd have enough questions for him when he did tell them tomorrow.
CHAPTER 13
Corrigan sat sideways in the front passenger seat. He still looked tense, leaning around the head-rest to talk. Minogue was not disposed to being sympathetic to Corrigan. He badly wanted more coffee. Dunne, Corrigan's driver, had watched Minogue gulp down two large white coffees bought on the hoof from Bewley's in Dundrum Shopping Centre. Minogue caught him looking askance at Corrigan, as if to seek reassurance from the Inspector.
Minogue's hangover had hit him as thirst and sluggishness. The want of sleep had left his joints aching, but he had woken up with that tremulous sense in his chest, the excitement. While he had been driving in to town to meet Corrigan, he had had enough opportunities to wonder if the plan wasn't as mad as Corrigan would say it was. Corrigan was getting edgier by the minute. He looked at his watch before thumbing to transmit.
"— Chestnut Control to Chestnuts One and Two. Come in."
"What's the Chestnut bit, Pat? Did you sack Alpha and Bravo and Foxtrot?" Minogue asked.
"— Chestnut Two Over."
"Any sign of our man moving around?" Corrigan asked Dunne. Dunne was toying with the handset, the link with the photo team working the house.
"No, sir," said Dunne.
"What's the Chestnut stuff, Pat?" Minogue repeated.
Corrigan let the mike drop lightly into his lap.
"Us being the Branch, we thought we'd start using the names of trees instead of Foxtrots and Tangos."
It was the first laugh Minogue had had all day. It relieved his own unease at any rate.
"— Chestnut One to Control. In position and standing by. Over."
"— Chestnut Two to Control. Waiting for the word, Control. Over."
"It's half eleven and the bugger is still in the house. He could be burning the shagging negatives and photos for all we know," Corri
gan muttered.
Corrigan's car was parked outside the Golden Ball pub in Kilternan. Two Special Branch radio-cars were deployed on the Enniskerry Road, both equipped with Motorola radio trackers for the transmitter bug attached to the inside of the back bumper of Moore's hired Mini. Corrigan had tried to explain the tracking system to Minogue, but Minogue's morning mind could not get around the detail. Both radio-tracking cars had computer terminals, which were radio-plugged into the mainframe operating out of Harcourt Terrace in the City Centre. A very simple thing, Corrigan told a disbelieving Minogue, to have the computer do the triangulation from the signals the two pursuit cars were monitoring. Minogue had stopped Corrigan's offhand tutorial when he had made the mistake of asking how much the system cost.
"This is a bit dodgy, all the same," Corrigan complained. "I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't have gone to the top with it already and not to be playing games out here, trying to make the cat jump the way we want…"
Beginning to wonder, Minogue reflected. He had had enough of a job persuading Corrigan not to ring the bells yet but to wait on Moore. Minogue hoped that Corrigan swore more because he was nervous than because he was losing his belief in the scheme. Dunne excused himself to go to the toilet in the pub. Did anyone want more coffee?
"If you find any real coffee, by all means," Minogue had said. "No instant anything."
There was promise of a sunny day yet. The smell of stale Guinness from the pub was not helping Minogue think any clearer.
"Are you listening to me, Matt? If this stuff is real at all, then Moore isn't worth playing. He's only a gofer, to clean up. He's solo, wait and you'll see."
"He may be part of a criminal conspiracy, I'd say, Pat," Minogue replied airily.
"All the more reason we shouldn't be keeping this to ourselves. If the embassy mob is mixed up in this, then I don't know what we'll do. The first thing we'll be asked is 'Why didn't you ujits inform the Commissioner and the Minister the minute you copped onto how big this was?'"