A stone of the heart imm-1

by John Brady

  "Youngish, I'd say. He'd be in his late thirties. He dresses fancy, sort of."

  "A man with no name?"

  "Never told me a name. I didn't ask. I could care less what his name is."

  Kilmartin turned to the detectives listening to the speaker.

  "What's the story on the business in Blackrock?" he asked.

  "We've picked up more suspects off the lists anyway. No sign of the actual killers, but they have to turn up somewhere. They might steal a car or turn up at a house under surveillance," one of the detectives replied cagily.

  "See any links with today?" Kilmartin murmured.

  No one answered. This is the belief, Minogue thought, that is why nobody can say it.

  "The place is full of Yanks, that's the thing. It'd be like McCarthy to work up an imaginary Yank to explain everything," the Special Branch man said.

  "Yes, but what kind of a Yank would pull a stunt like this? Assuming this Yank really exists at all and McCarthy isn't spinning out rope for someone else's neck…?"

  Kilmartin's belly ached. It was like someone had stabbed him. He stole a glance at Minogue. No awkwardness rubbed against them now. They listened again to the speaker.

  "How do you know he was American?"

  "Accent."

  "Drawl? New York maybe?"

  "I don't know anything about that. He didn't sound like a cowboy."

  "Where is he staying?"

  "Jases, I don't know. He just came up to me out of the blue," the playwright replied.

  "How did he know to go to you?"

  "How would I know? Maybe I have fans out there and they put him my way."

  "What did he talk to you about? You said he wanted to meet republicans."

  "Said he wanted to write a piece on the Troubles here. Wanted to get'the real story,' he says. I told him to shag off but he kept on yapping and asking me things."

  "What things?"

  "It's hard to know where to start…"

  The playwright was back in role now, Minogue thought. The confidence was returning to him. He was off acting again. The wall between his inner landscape and the real world had collapsed years ago. Maybe he wanted drama, anything on the blade edge of life whether it was to do with guns or props. But this man sounded normal, even witty. As sane as the next man. Yet he didn't keep budgies or go along with superstitions or worship the sun: he was part of an organisation that killed people. Is that what mad means, when you can't tell the difference anymore?

  Minogue's chest leadened when he felt the truth of this. He thought of Dublin in the fifties, moribund and discoloured. No wonder there was so much emigration. This fool had emigrated all right, but inwardly: he had willed his life away to The Cause.

  "What exactly did he say, then?"

  "I don't remember his exact words."

  "Try."

  "Like I said, he said he wanted to meet republicans."

  "Why?"

  "Just to meet them. To do a story on them, I suppose."

  "What were his interests?"

  "I don't know. Maybe a tourist looking for excitement."

  "Married?"

  "How would I know?"

  "A ring?"

  "Didn't look."

  This could go on for hours and it would. He was lying, probably buying some time for this fellow. Give away a little so they believe the big lies.

  Kilmartin leaned back, balancing on the back legs of the chair and said, "Well, are ye out looking?"

  "Hotels, airports and ferries, sir. The whole bit," a Special Branch man answered.

  "So. It appears to me that a) there's enough truth in this business about an American to allow us to bugger up by wasting time; b) there's some element of betrayal here. McCarthy would like to spill all the beans, but then he'd be a marked man if he sold someone out. McCarthy understands the business about being implicated in a capital offence so he'll let go stuff a bit at a time."

  "Time's the thing," the Special Branch man echoed.

  "I'm thinking," Kilmartin said slowly, "that you fellas charged with pursuing this investigation in the murder of one of my men should find some way to eliminate this time factor. This would effect a speedy resolution, I'm thinking."

  No one answered. Although the interrogation went on over the speaker, Minogue believed that no one was listening anymore. Pencils were being fingered and shoes observed.

  "Go over your description again."

  "Medium height. He wore a suit," the playwright answered. He was talking too readily, Minogue understood. A command performance.

  "And…?"

  "There was nothing special about him. In his thirties."

  "Eyes?"

  "I dunno. I suppose they were blue."

  "Balding?"

  "No he had a full head of hair. Trimmed, looked after."

  Kilmartin seemed to be examining his fingernails minutely. Minogue wondered how many Americans would be in the country at this time of year. Thousands?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He slipped the Canadian passport into the inside pocket of his jacket. Again he checked his recall on the dates and events of his new self. He didn't need an inbound airline ticket stub because Professor Levesque had come across as a foot passenger from Holyhead and he had one-wayed it to London from New York on a cheap flight.

  He looked at himself in the mirror. Above the glasses, his hair was parted more to the centre now. The light Gore-Tex jacket and the lumberjack shirt added to a stereotype. Behind him, he noticed the suitcase he'd be leaving. Inside, neatly folded, was his suit. Everything else had fitted into the shoulder bag. For a few seconds he wondered if he had omitted anything from the routine. Yes, he had gone over the bathroom fixtures; the television, the suitcase. O.K. He turned and allowed his eyes to take in the room. The window? Yes. Door? Yes. Glasses or bottles? Gone.

  He couldn't afford to worry about things like a hair in the bathroom. He zipped the bag. As he bent over, he felt the gun detach itself slightly from his chest. That'd have to go too but after he was on the boat. They could bellyache all they wanted about the trouble it was to get one for him and then him just dumping it. Bellyache, he thought, snared for a moment on memory. His father had used that word often. When he had cried on their first visit to his boarding school, his father had grabbed him by the arm:

  "Don't bellyache. You'll look back and thank us." When he got clear, he'd find a way to do for McCarthy.

  Kilmartin stood up.

  "Gentlemen, I'll be staying in the station here while you listen on to this drivel. If you have any news for me, kindly relay it to me within the next half hour. Anything after that will be all but useless, I'm thinking."

  Minogue saw embarrassment on the men's faces. They nodded. Minogue joined Kilmartin as he turned and walked through the door. As he closed the door behind him, Kilmartin murmured:

  "Well, do you think they have the idea?"

  Minogue didn't answer. Their driver, the sergeant, was leaning on the back of a chair in the canteen, smoking. The desk sergeant, who had come off duty but was hanging around for news, sat opposite.

  "More tea, men?" he said

  Minogue and Kilmartin declined.

  "The back of the neck is what it is," their driver continued, putting out smoke as he talked.

  "'Yank' my arse. Leading us up the garden path, he is," he muttered.

  The off-duty sergeant nodded.

  The talk dried up. Other policemen came and went in the canteen. When Minogue looked at his watch, twenty minutes had passed. He had thought of asking the driver for one of his cigarettes. Before he did, one of the three men who had sat with them listening to the questioning came in. He walked to their table. Kilmartin looked up sardonically.

  "Well? Has the cow calved?"

  "Sir. If you could step into the room beyond, we can brief you."

  Kilmartin and Minogue returned. No sounds came over the speaker. So that was what they'd done, Minogue thought.

  "The suspect has informed
us that he believes this American may have more, er, significance than was first thought, sir."

  "Go on," said Kilmartin.

  "McCarthy stresses his minimal knowledge and involvement."

  "And all the rest of it," Kilmartin said grimly.

  "But he understands that the American is here to do with some transporting of something or other to the North."

  "What exactly does that mean?" Kilmartin's voice rose.

  "His guess is that this man is involved in weapons."

  Kilmartin snorted and headed for the door.

  "Let me talk to Mr Shakespeare and we'll have it out in detail. I know how to deal with the likes of him," he hissed.

  The Special Branch officer moved to stop him and Minogue heard the man call out:

  "That isn't possible right now, sir."

  Kilmartin wheeled around and looked at him, then to Minogue.

  "McCarthy is indisposed at the moment, sir. Fainted."

  Kilmartin stared at the nervous officer blocking his way.

  "But we have a better description of this Yank, sir."

  "This hypothetical Yank, you mean. My money's on some gun-happy slug down from the North and Connors came on him."

  "And thinks the Yank mentioned something about the Shelbourne Hotel, sir."

  Kilmartin stepped back and looked to Minogue. Minogue noted the glimmer in Kilmartin's surly gaze now.

  "Maybe there is something to this Yank then…" Kilmartin said.

  "They'll know him at the Shelbourne, sir, if he's staying there. Nothing as sharp as a good desk-man in a fancy hotel, is there, sir?" the detective said, mollifying. His efforts did not break the cast of skepticism on Kilmartin's face.

  Just before they reached Drogheda, a glaring sun appeared from between the evening clouds. It flooded the car with gold. It ran along beside the car, through the trees and the bushes, full on Agnes when they had fields to the west of them. Allen knew they wouldn't meet the sea again until close to Dundalk. By then it would be dark. Agnes' eyes were closed. He smelled a faint perfume in the car. The light set her hair a-dazzle.

  Under the trees and in the ditches the shadows were broadening out. Already the sun couldn't get over a hedge here, the roof of a house there. Where the sun still hit fields, the green was luminous. They passed a tinker camp, the men on hunkers next to a fire. Every second or third vehicle was a lorry. The edges of the road were greyed by their passing. Sometimes Allen would find the mirror filled with the dinosaur front of an eighteen-wheeler, out of nowhere. When they stopped for petrol, the boy stood by the car looking over the inside, curious about Agnes.

  "A good evening for travelling now," he said. "There'll be no rain."

  "How do you know?" Allen said.

  "Oh sure we've had our ration for the week. Sure wasn't it a terrible week? Wasn't I drownded myself here several times in the one day," the boy answered.

  Allen heard Michael Jackson coming through the half open door beyond the pumps.

  "I suppose," said Allen, "you might have something there."

  When Allen sat back in the car, Agnes said:

  "Where are we?"

  "Near Drogheda. It'll be dark soon," Allen replied. "God," Agnes said yawning "Drogheda. This is the longest road in Ireland so it is."

  Agnes looked out at the town. Already some streetlights were glowing purple, a prelude to the glare of yellowy light which disfigured towns all over Ireland. The sun was gone now. Overhead, puff carpets of grey clouds showed pink edges. The world was straining toward the west. As the car passed pubs, she saw shadows and soft lights in the windows. The shops and supermarkets were busy. Cars parked up on the kerb. Agnes thought of what Jarlath would have done tonight. He'd have suggested a foreign film probably. Reluctantly, Agnes would have agreed to go along. His callowness would make her feel guilty. Then she remembered that she had arranged to avoid a date with him by going to a friend's flat. She didn't want to go there, but she didn't want to encourage Jarlath either. An icy breath ran through her chest. To think that this could have happened. Was it only sinking in now?

  She forced herself to think of Tuscany. A moon would be up. The stone walls would be warm. The sky would be full of stars. She could sleep in a barn or in the fields to be awakened at dawn. That was the way to live, sleeping from dusk to dawn. None of those noises at night, the sirens or the floodlights. La Luna, mi amore.

  "Daydreaming, Agnes?" said Allen.

  She glanced at him. What was different about him? She was too used to seeing him deliver lectures.

  "A bit, I suppose."

  "You think being restless is exclusively the preserve of persons under twenty-five? Or perhaps a sign of early senility?"

  "Aye. We all could do with a break," she said.

  Agnes thought of the city waiting for her, her bedroom, the telly with the news blaring out one more miserable day for the city. She had trouble remembering her father's face, seeing only the crumbling face of her mother. With no warning, her mother could be stricken helpless with crying. Watching T.V., reading a book or eating, her mother's face would suddenly contort. Agnes understood it was the commonplace things that could upset her, the vertiginous understanding that her husband was dead. No shaving soap in the bathroom, no other person in bed, no need to make sure the toast wasn't underdone. Agnes could comfort her mother again and again, but the weight seemed to increase.

  Sometimes she felt that she was nothing, neither young or old. When would it all end?

  The sergeant started up the car. Minogue sat in the front passenger seat. He felt Kilmartin's impatience as a palpable weight in the car. Minogue noticed that the sergeant's uniform was spotted with cigarette ash. His breath came across stale, penetrating.

  "Well, the Branch didn't so much say it as let it be known," Kilmartin began. "They got a phone call. Somebody claiming that there's going to be a car going north with weapons aboard. Tomorrow. They think it might have to do with that other car or cars in that garage."

  Minogue contented himself with looking out at the dusk over College Green.

  "They know the heat's on. I don't doubt they want results fast," Kilmartin murmured.

  "Yes," Minogue allowed. He was tired. Drifting through the traffic made him sleepy.

  "They've bought into McCarthy's Yank business anyway. I still have me doubts. Yank or not, you can't persuade me there isn't a connection though," Kilmartin said.

  "What?" Minogue said reflexively.

  "The shooting in Blackrock. The place is gone to hell in a wheelbarrow. I can see the news tonight and the bloody headlines: 'Murderers still at large,' 'Armed men on the rampage in Dublin,' 'Gardai draw a blank in search for killers."'

  "You think the same people are involved," Minogue said.

  "Maybe not the actual same people. Did I tell you we got a rocket about being alert for new types of weapons and a new network for getting them in? That's what has the Branch looking for this mysterious Yank and taking crank calls seriously. The fella who called described a car that sounds like the one in the garage. And the way McCarthy was hinting about arms smuggling got them going in a big way," Kilmartin said.

  "Well in anyhow: the other thing is a no-go. Those two fellas have gone to ground. Between me and you and the wall-" Kilmartin nodded in the direction of the sergeant's head, "-those shaggers are back in the North by now."

  "Signs on," Minogue said.

  "And as for the thing about the garage, well I'm sure we closed it down before anything became operational. I say it was a mistake to raid it," Kilmartin said.

  Minogue elbowed onto the seat and turned to Kilmartin. He was wary of the sergeant driving because he would be all ears, like anyone else, for an inspector's candour. Minogue imagined the sergeant going home to his wife: 'Wait 'til I tell you what I heard today… '

  Minogue was surprised to find himself alert. He noticed that Kilmartin was frowning at him. The front gate of Trinity College fell away behind the car, as the sergeant wheeled the car around
into Dame Street.

  Minogue's knees began to itch. He strained further to look out the back window at Trinity College receding behind them. It looked magical, a place apart. The lights gave it an air of churchiness. Students emerged from the archway, out onto the centre of a city which Minogue believed had gone mad. They could always go back in to the squares and the classic proportions, to the insulated clarity of that island. Stone buildings and edged lawns answered the bullydom of Ireland. But no: that was false, too facile. Minogue was thinking as a peasant. In the week he had been in and out of the university, he had felt it had a vulnerability, despite the intellectual and physical architecture which held it in place. No amount of pretty young girls with baskets on the handlebars of th^jr old bikes could stop history. No amount of paintings hanging down over the dining tables could exempt this place from the present.

  Agnes McGuire carrying her terrible burdens. Mick Roche trying to work through the place, not cynical enough to give up on the well-to-do students there. And Allen, for all his academic manner, he was trying in his own way to change things. Was he jealous of Allen? Minogue recalled Agnes smiling briefly as she went off in Allen's car, under his care. Maybe it was that he, Minogue, had felt stuck on the sidelines again, a spectator to events, with Allen's swanky car hissing away to the funeral in the rain. Allen's car: Jesus, Mary and Joseph…

  "Pull over here, if you please, Sergeant," Minogue said.

  Kilmartin was staring at Minogue.

  "That other car in that garage. You said whoever called gave a description which might match that one in the garage."

  "The Mercedes, the canary yoke," Kilmartin said.

  "No. The other one,"

  "We don't know. A Japanese car, fancy, was the best we got on the one in the garage."

  "And the one in the tip-off?"

  "I don't know. A Branch man just told me it was awful like the description of the other one," replied Kilmartin.

  "Are there any reports of stolen cars of that type?"

  "Now, Matt, you know as well as I do… "

  "But it was checked against the reported stolens, wasn't it?"

  "No doubt. But, here, hold on a minute Matt. The one in the garage might have been legit anyway, a fella fixing a car. Anything. It was only that oul lad thinking he saw one. Let the Branch worry about it."