by John Brady
"His school-bag?" asked Minogue, with a slight stir in his stomach.
"No, that was gone. He had it stolen from him. He had to sneak in home with his shopping bag so no one'd see him. The one that was taken was a present from his mother so there'd be wigs on the green if they found out."
"Stolen in college?"
"Right out of his locker, locked and all."
"And did he have valuables in it?"
"Not really. He caught up on the lecture notes by borrowing. Notebooks and bits of things went. A fountain pen he won in debating competition in secondary school. A snap of me." She blushed lightly.
A minute's silence filled the room. It seemed to rest on the grey light which morning had brought to this part of the college. Minogue remembered that it was sunny on the other side of the square when he came in. He felt Agnes willing herself not to cry. He pretended to note things on his sheets. He was thinking of Iseult. Agnes' composure had returned.
"Agnes, if you don't think it's forward of me, may I invite you to come for coffee with me above in Bewley's? I'm allowed some freedom on this case and I intend to sustain myself well. A sticky bun. Maybe we'll risk a large white coffee too, upstairs. If I'm not presuming too much…"
Upstairs in Bewley's the sun roared in the windows, shocking the wood into showing different hues. The newspapers were luminous sheets in the rage of light. From halfway across the room, he could see where an old man hadn't shaved. Minogue didn't ask any more about Jarlath Walsh. Nor did he mention anything about the North. Emboldened by the coffee, Minogue found himself talking with a young woman his daughter's age about the National Gallery and the recitals he planned to go to.
He talked on and on. Agnes looked from him to the sunlit windows and then back. Sometimes she laughed aloud. Minogue, for his part, kept on talking while the sunlight-in its slow and grudging move through Dublin-graced the next table.
Minogue's profligacy with time still allowed him to see Captain Loftus before dinner-time. He climbed the circular staircase slowly, trying to sort out the impressions. History, an alien history, came to him with the lavender smell of floor polish and the echoes of his own footsteps. As he mounted the staircase, his hand rested at times on a varnished banister. Below and to the left of him always, the flagged floor turned lazily with Minogue's ascent.
He knocked and pushed at a heavy door. Loftus turned from a cabinet.
"Ah, Sergeant…"
"Minogue."
"Indeed. Is it me you came to see?"
"To be sure. I was hoping to find out more about that boy's locker. It was broken open some time ago. Do ye keep any reports on such goings-on in the college?" Minogue asked.
"Let me see… "
Loftus opened a drawer and glanced at a document. Minogue worked hard to conceal his humour, or rather his ill humour. He smelled a cloying scent of aftershave off Loftus. Let me see, indeed. Let me see your Aunt Fanny's fat agricultural arse.
"Some three weeks ago, Sergeant. Four lockers were broken open. As a matter of policy we don't trouble the Gardai with these things. Little enough was lost. Notes, someone's rugby shirt, another lad's lunch." Loftus smiled.
"Jarlath Walsh's bag."
Loftus looked back at the sheet.
"Yes, that too. Yes"
"Do you by chance have a list of the items reported stolen, Captain Loftus? Might I see it?"
"No problem," said Loftus.
Must have learned the 'no problem' stuff off the Yanks. Jarlath Walsh, 24 South Park, Foxrock, County Dublin: one leather briefcase, black, containing two notebooks and various lecture notes, mementoes/personal, no cash, pens, pencils, a tape recorder.
"A tape recorder?"
"Apparently so. Mr Walsh likely used it for lectures, I expect."
"What's the usual routine on this stuff, Captain?"
"Eventually compensation. We stress that the college is not liable for damage or theft, but we don't like to leave people hanging. Especially in this case. I had authorised payment to Mr Walsh the day I heard the news."
"Yes. I suspect that the thief used a crowbar or the end of a heavy screwdriver. Determined. You'll understand, Sergeant, that manpower needs preclude constant patrols."
"Dublin isn't what it used to be, is it, Captain?"
"Indeed, Sergeant. The needs must. We do what we can. A person desperate for anything to steal really. A drinking problem. Maybe just vandalism."
Yes, thought Minogue, plenty of that. Drive out by Tallaght in your BMW on the way home to your enclave. You'd probably spend your next few weekends adding glass to the top of your walls.
"Thank you, Captain."
Minogue phoned in a want card on a tape recorder and a black leather briefcase if any citizen should turn it in. Fat chance. He phoned Kilmartin's office.
"Matt, the hard man."
"Jimmy, how are you? Any give on the spot where this Walsh boy was killed?"
"Divil a bit, Matt. The two lads from Pearse Street scoured the college looking all day yesterday. Did you bump into them at all?"
"No."
"Well, the gist of it is that they found nothing. Tell you the truth, I think they're praying for rain so that they have the excuse to give it up. They are wall-eyed after a day of that. The fellas in Pearse Street found nothing on the weekend anyway."
"Hmm…"
"Do you want manpower?"
"No thanks, Jimmy. Slowly but surely. I'll put a few notes together and rocket them over to you."
"Incidentally. Connors is gone to the Walshes to go over things with them. Save you the trouble. He needs the practice in this kind of thing. A bit weak in the shell. Have a look at what he says tomorrow."
Minogue put down the phone. He was glad he didn't have to interview the parents. He thought about Loftus, about how he wanted to show he was running a tight ship. What was he hiding, though? Crossing Front Square toward the room he had been assigned at the college, Minogue passed Mick Roche.
"How'ya, Mick?"
"And yourself, Sergeant?"
"Will you direct me to Dr Allen's place?"
"The headbanger? The psychology fella. Oh yeah, you'll have no trouble finding him. Follow the crowds."
"How do you mean?"
"Just joking. He's a bit of a guru. He has a loyal following, especially in Agnes McGuire."
Minogue followed directions to Allen's office in New Square. Allen greeted him with a tight handshake. He seemed to have expected him.
"Professor Allen. Thank you for your time. I tried to make an appointment but yo, ur line was engaged."
Minogue. examined Allen's face. He was drawn to the eyes. Unbotherable, confident. The eyes rested. on an outdoor face which looked open. A full head of hair, though quite grey. An attractive man to women, Minogue concurred without thinking about it. Allen was dressed casually. He had stepped out of his shoes. His fortyish face smiled in an unsmile, a formal ease.
"I sometimes leave the phone off the hook. Things find me eventually and the more necessary ones will reach me first, I find."
"Sergeant Matt Minogue," and Minogue proffered a hand.
"Not Malone, then. That clears that up," Allen smiled.
They sat. Minogue glanced at the rubbings of figures taken, he guessed, from old stones lying around the ditches of Ireland or from monuments as they were called. These poster-size rubbings were all of whorl patterns.
"They're very nice, Professor Allen. The rubbings. They're hard to do though. I did them as a child."
"Minogue. That's a Clare name, is it not?"
"It is to be sure. And yourself?"
"I'm an Englishman actually. What you hear is an overlay of ten years of being in Ireland, with a heavy foundation of Lancashire."
"You'd never know it."
"More Irish than the Irish themselves you might say, Sergeant."
He had the charm and the small talk too, Minogue reflected.
"Actually, my mother was Irish. An emigrant. Regrettably, she died before sh
e could return for her old age."
"A hard thing to leave go of, the mother country. How well you knew I was from Clare now."
"I do a lot of ethnography, more as a hobby. See this?" Allen pointed to one of the rubbings.
"I got it in West Clare. I went on a dig some years ago in Sardinia and I found a pattern almost identical to this one. A type of mandala. Some people get a bit upset about finding these kinds of similarities, isn't that odd?"
"It is, I suppose," Minogue allowed.
"People don't like to realise that others had the same inspirations or troubles or joys as countless others. Sort of offends against one's sense of uniqueness. Our treasured assumptions about how we control the world."
"You have me there," Minogue murmured.
"It's nothing really. Some of us think that causes and effects are out of our hands. Other people like to think they have more control over things. Illusion really, but it's the belief that counts."
"Superstition, like?"
"In a sense, yes. Look at Americans for instance. They seem to think they can do just about anything. They have a nice, cosy, irrational belief in Progress. Now, Irish people are a bit passive perhaps, but there's history too… Shouldn't generalise really."
"Well you've given me a lot to be thinking about now, Dr Allen," Minogue said thoughtfully.
"I wonder," Allen replied, "I wonder why I'm telling you this. It's not what you're here for, is it? Maybe you have some facility as a seer, drawing out things."
Minogue affected to be surprised. He laughed lightly.
"Ah, I'm a bit pedestrian at the best of times. But continuing on from what you were saying about people believing they can effect things, can I ask you where you'd place Jarlath Walsh there?"
Allen sat back and crossed his legs at the ankles. His forehead moved slightly and his hair moved with it.
"Hmm. Interesting you should ask. Yes. You know of course that what I say is not in the nature of a report. Mr Walsh attended one lecture a week with me. I hardly knew him. I'm not sure why he chose to do this course."
He paused as if to think deeply. "Switched into his official style," Minogue memoed himself.
"I can't say that Mr Walsh was the brightest student in the class. He definitely had an interest in the subject as a whole, but from an essay he wrote me at Christmas I feel that he didn't have the background for attempting what he appeared to be attempting."
"What was that?"
"Well, he was trying to develop a psychology of a typical Irish person, I suppose you would say."
Allen's forehead went up again and he studied his toes. "Let me see if I can explain, Sergeant. Stuff like this might have worked in the last century. No, I should be more charitable about it… Psychology has come a long way from metaphysics in the last century. Mr Walsh wanted to plug in an easy theory into his understanding of Irish politics. He had taken an interest in the violence in the North, of all things. Let's say more than others in the Republic anyway. I suppose he thought there was a simple psychological solution. He was quite emphatic about this. One can understand naive enthusiasm, but Mr Walsh had not moved from this position. There's quite an attraction for people in this stuff about national character. You hear a lot of it. The Russians are supposed to be dour and bearish people who favour despots, or the Irish are charming dodgers. Any good psychology has to account for individual differences as well as commonalities across cultures. Mr Walsh was tempted to reach for what we call Grand Theory." Allen paused. A trace of amusement passed over his face.
"Am I lecturing?" he asked softly, as if taken aback at a great new understanding of himself.
"Not a bit of it," replied Minogue with conviction.
"It may be that Irish people don't feel they can effect any solutions in the North. Pessimism and acceptance. However, one can't be too careful with those wild, huge hypotheses. With Jar-lath Walsh, it was becoming a Pollyanna-ish thing really. Still, he had done a lot of work and he got better than a passing mark."
Minogue was thinking about Agnes McGuire. Maybe she was lying down in her room, thinking of the boy. Perhaps Walsh had been learning something but not something a university could teach. He had found Agnes anyway. Why wouldn't a callow young man believe that some psychology could fix the mess up north? It would have that attractive simplicity, a parallel to feelings which were newly arrived to him with Agnes perhaps, and he could have been swept away with inexperience and optimism.
"I think I see what you mean. Tell me, did you know that Jarlath had a relationship, can I say, with a. student in your class? Agnes McGuire, she's in your class too, am I right?"
"Yes. You may have touched on the chief reason he was in the class in the first place."
Minogue could detect no trace of sarcasm in Allen's voice. As if in answer, Allen said:
"I'm not being flippant or dismissive. Have you spoken with her yet?"
"This very day," Minogue replied.
"Perhaps lecturers are not supposed to notice, but I think Mr Walsh was very taken with her."
"I had the same impression. Like we say though, she's young."
"Ah but Sergeant, years aren't everything. I imagine there was a wealth of difference between her and Mr Walsh. Sometimes the facts, big as they are, escape us."
"In…?"
"Agnes McGuire has lived through a lot, Sergeant."
"Oh yes. Belfast."
"And more," Allen replied, leaning forward in his chair to ruin Minogue's day.
"Her father was a magistrate in Belfast. He was assassinated three years ago."
Minogue felt as if the afternoon had run in a window and fallen on top of him. It wasn't the faint touch of smugness in the delivery that suggested he hadn't done his homework. It was more the thought of Agnes' composure, the control she had. She had had the cruellest practice.
The silence in the room lasted for a full minute.
"Three years."
"I'm Agnes' tutor. We take on groups of students to help and advise them. She was assigned to me alphabetically. My specialty is in the psychology of aggression, of all things. I do public lectures all around Ireland, North and South. Everything's coloured by what happens hf the North, of course. Here I was, sitting across the table from her. I'm trained in various therapy techniques, you see. I expected that she'd be a candidate for help. Given the right suggestions, learning is improved, relationships bloom. I cannot disclose anything of our chats, you'll understand, but let me tell you that Agnes McGuire gives credence to some unfashionable notions. Health, freedom…"
"Strange to think…" Minogue began.
"That she and Walsh could get along? She's Catholic. Her father was killed by Protestant extremists. Isn't that something in itself?"
"I don't follow," Minogue said.
"You'd think they'd leave him alone, wouldn't you? I mean they talk about law and order and enforcing the rule of law when it suits them. The thing was that McGuire was the one who started the process of getting Loyalist paramilitaries behind bars, not just the IRA. I imagine the other side couldn't countenance a Catholic putting away one of theirs, no matter that he was part of the institutions they said they were fighting for."
Minogue said nothing. A whorl of pity eddied down his stomach. No, not pity: regret.
"So much for rationality and politics," Allen said.
"So much indeed," Minogue muttered.
It was beginning to dawn on Minogue that Jarlath Walsh had been naive all right. Still, there was a pedestrian heroism to his ideas. In the end though, what did this all have to do with his getting killed? Ireland entertained a lot of people with the most lunatic ideas. Some were even elected to promote those ideas.
Minogue made to go. Allen's eyes had gone out of focus. They returned to focussing on his feet. Then he looked up at Minogue.
"Sergeant, I last saw Mr Walsh after last Thursday's lecture. That I've told you. I'm not sure if what I'll tell you now has any bearing on your investigations. For some weeks now, Wals
h has been asking me privately at the end of the lectures for books on the psychological effects of things like cigarettes, alcohol, narcotics and so on."
Minogue tried to look unconcerned, but apparently it didn't work.
"That shocks you a little, Sergeant?"
"I'm a bit taken aback to be sure. I'm sure that you can understand how one forms an image as one investigates someone's life." Minogue liked the sound of the way he had said that, very neutral and analytical.
"Narcotics. You mean hash and grass basically?"
"I suppose I do," Allen replied with the faintest of smiles. Touche, thought Minogue.
Minogue recalled the bland assurances he had had from college officials about this kind of thing not being on their turf, oh no.
Minogue's mind was tired. He was beginning to feel irritable. He felt uninformed. He hadn't really one promising lead, not a sausage. Intuitions meant nothing, less than nothing, because they deflected his attention. Look: he had spent ten minutes talking about Agnes McGuire. Romancing, he was. Go home to your wife.
CHAPTER FIVE
Instead of going home to his wife, a contrary Minogue knocked on Captain Loftus' door. He caught Loftus leaving. Loftus stood in the doorway, half-coated, reaching for the sleeve. The office had a strong smell of aftershave.
"A minute of your time, Captain. I'd like to see Walsh's locker."
"Ah, that'll be a job. I'm afraid those lockers were too badly damaged now. They've been replaced."
Minogue felt the beginnings of indignation.
"I had the understanding that the lock was jemmied. They'd be those little locks you get in Woolworth's. There'd hardly be damage to the locker itself though, would there?"
Loftus dodged, pretending to search for keys in his pocket.
"There was a lot of damage done, Sergeant. The hinges were torn out. You can't just weld on a door. They make you buy the whole unit. There was nothing for it but to be rid of them."
"Where are they now?"
"They'd be gone to the dump, I expect. Good for nothing."