The Coast Road (Matt Minogue Mysteries)

by John Brady

  “I’m going to start on this now,” he said to Malone. “Any pointers for me?”

  Malone eyed the folder, and then Minogue.

  “Don’t be fretting,” Minogue said. “Case review guidelines, they’re called, not The Ten Commandments. So talk to me. What were you thinking after you read it?”

  “Okay,” Malone said. “One attacker. And he was kicked a lot – I mean really kicked – so a serious going-over. It wasn’t just a barney, a fight, I mean. No choke marks, no defensive stuff. No weapons or objects at hand. No sign of that rock.”

  “Just the big drop on the head, am I remembering right…?”

  “Right.”

  Minogue turned to the summary first. Larkin’s skull had shattered at the top of his forehead. His brain was coated in a film of blood and more hemorrhages were also found inside the brain. There was blood in his lungs. It could not be said with certainty if that alone had caused him to choke to death. Such injuries would almost certainly have severed nerve cell filaments. Nerve cell filaments? Some sort of a brutal mercy, maybe.

  There had been multiple injuries to the head and neck beyond that fatal crushing of the top of the forehead. A spreading, fan-shaped pattern over the right ear was noted, and another patterned bruise behind the right jaw. As if these weren’t enough, the report noted that injuries like this to the neck can cause cardiac arrest and instant death.

  He put the pages down, and gingerly eyed some of the digital prints. He tried to stifle an image that distracted him, of bog bodies and their flattened faces.

  “Pretty bad,” Malone murmured. “Yeah?”

  “It’s bad all right.”

  “The worst you ever saw?”

  “They’re all the worst, Tommy. Every one, every time. You know that.”

  ***

  By four o’clock, Minogue was beyond restless. The place was getting to him again. He had already made two quick forays against the claustrophobia, down the hall to a window looking over the yard at the back of the station. A heavy shower had come and gone over the town, and left drops shivering on the window there.

  There had been no phone call from Immaculata. He took that to mean that none of Larkin’s cronies had shown up at her Disciples drop-in place.

  Malone tapped a finger on the copies of Larkin’s treatment reports.

  “That’s something, that stuff. The children thing? Neighbours? Jaysus.”

  Minogue was surprised at Malone’s squeamishness. “Child molesting, you’re talking about?” Malone’s reply came after a slow, ironic look.

  “I thought it was only priests did that stuff,” he said. Minogue gave him the eye.

  “What,” said Malone. “I’m not allowed say that? What about that commission thing next week? It better not be a white-wash. They better be naming names.”

  “Give them a fair trial and then hang them. Is that your approach?”

  Malone’s reply was to study his nails.

  Minogue refocused on his own summary. Padraig Thomas Larkin, fifty-eight; chronic alcoholism, serial markers of organic brain damage. A long list of failed efforts at working. Clerk, deliveryman; supermarket yard worker – whatever that was. Parking attendant? He had worked in some capacity at a homeless shelter in a ‘recycling enterprise.’ Four recorded visits to Accident and Emergency had punctuated his time in England. Two London hospitals, a total of five hospital stays. ‘Accident due impairment,’ in two, victim of assault in another two. Pneumonia/collapsed lung in the other. A seven-month stay in some St Helier place, in Surrey, with some treatment. A record of faltering attendance at two psychiatric outpatient clinics over a period of three years.

  Larkin’s return to Ireland had come just as the Boom was starting. A timed return to Ireland? Hardly. He’d hardly timed his exit with the crash either. Those years seemed to have given him a more sedate existence: no record of contact with the criminal justice system. His name had two entries on Pulse, the Garda information database: witnesses to assault. One had a notation of ‘unhelpful.’ Visits to the Accident and Emergency in Dublin had been relatively sparse. He had long stays at hostels, many to the six-month limit. The Simon Community had tried a Transitional House scheme. It wasn’t clear why it had fallen through.

  He turned to the notes from Larkin’s psychiatrists. They seemed stale, wordy, out-of-date. Larkin had been fifteen that year. The Summer of Love, that year was called? He had admitted to taking – ‘trying’ – LSD, but claimed not to have known what its effects could be. No recall of going into the garage with the girl from down the road. “Surprise surprise.”

  Malone had been following his reading.

  “The rot started with drugs? So that was the Sixties, maaan?”

  Minogue disdained a reply. Malone began moving his head and neck in those short jerks, moves that Minogue assumed had something to with fitness routines.

  “What did they call that kind of carry-on back then anyway?”

  “They had euphemisms. ‘Interfering with’ was one, I remember.”

  “What,” said Malone. “No one said it out straight? Like, rape? Sexual assault?” “It was a different time.”

  “Different? Like his daddy’s a judge, and all that? Warped, or what.”

  Minogue shrugged.

  “And no charges,” Malone added. “How’s about that? Not even drug treatment. Wait, was there addiction treatment back then? Coolmine?”

  “Coolmine was the Seventies, I think, early Seventies.”

  “Yeah well, that hasn’t changed, has it. Money still talks.”

  The teenage Larkin had been taken out of boarding school, and sent to this shrink. The files had gone into Larkin’s medical record after the shrink died a decade ago.

  Malone trudged toward the door, and studied the pages that Minogue had taped to the wall next to it. The maps of Dalkey and Killiney seemed to draw his interest most.

  Minogue let the pages collapse back into their sheaf, pushed back his chair and looked across at the maps. Larkin’s known movements and sightings were in red. There weren’t just days missing, there were weeks. No wonder the case had been treading water.

  Floorboards creaked with Malone’s extended stretch. He spoke though a yawn.

  “Surprises me he got as far as he did. Sleeping rough like that, at his age?”

  Genes, Minogue wondered. Luck? That farmers’ saying about weeds came to rest in his mind: ‘Hard to kill a bad thing’?

  “That sister of his,” Malone said. “She must have known all this. You think?”

  “It’s hard to see how she wouldn’t have.”

  “Orna,” Malone said, pausing between syllables. “Is that a real name, Orna?”

  “For a certain generation it is, a certain social stratum.”

  “Funny names out here, Southside names. Does it mean something?”

  “‘Golden one.’ See what you’re missing because you don’t know any Irish?”

  “Huh. Seen that statement of hers yet? Not much gold in that. All it is, is the bare minimum. Info and verification. Next-of-kin? His only sibling? They phoned her back a few times. Know what she says? ‘The matter’s closed.’ Really. ‘I’ve told you what I know, the matter is closed.’ It’s right there where she said that, on the last page. Read that over a few times there, go on. I did. It gets you wondering about people, I tell you.”

  Minogue made a quick calculation: including the time Orna Larkin had spent in university there, she’d been in England over forty years.

  Malone was still thinking aloud.

  “A no-show, even for the funeral. That says something, doesn’t it? But who are we to judge, right? And she did keep up the allowance for him. Guilt money, maybe?”

  “How much was it again?”

  “Fifty euro a week – enough for cigarettes and a few jars. She said the mother gave him money to get something started in London years ago. Blew it, apparently.” Malone scratched the back of his head.

  “But this sister did all right though
, didn’t she,” he added.

  “She made her own life and all. Didn’t marry, but. And what is she again, some science thing?” “A chemist. Some outfit near London.”

  “High up in it though, right? Not bad. Brainpower there, I’ll bet you.”

  “It looks like she ran out of here, first chance she got. Dublin, like, or Ireland.”

  “Emigrated,” Minogue said. “Went where the opportunities were.”

  “You think? ‘Didn’t come back’ equals ‘ran’ to me. Bolted.”

  “There wasn’t much stirring here during those times, especially for girls.”

  Malone’s slow stroll had returned him to the maps. This time, he studied the topographic rings around the hills that made up Killiney Hill Park. The photocopier had done a not-great job with the colours and shades from the original.

  “We really should take another run at placing him better,” Minogue said. “That’s number one for me at the moment. We can’t place him for days and days before Seán’s girl found him on the Hill there. Rhiannon.”

  “Run a public appeal again then? Right away, like?” The phone ringing startled them both. It was Fitz. Did they want a chat with the two officers who’d handled the case? Fitz asked if they would prefer to have a chat down the street at a café maybe, get out of that ‘little confession box.’

  Minogue replaced the folders. He had the trouble locking the enclosures that he expected. Malone was closing the door behind him when his mobile went.

  “Find your way down when you’re ready,” he said to Malone.

  He was soon tapping at the half-open door to the detectives’ office.

  “Come in, come in,” said Fitz. “No need to knock.” The office was spacious; tatty enough too, but almost homely. In its high ceilings and tall windows Minogue read signs of its former life as a drawing room, or a parlour. There was the usual pairing of desks, with their matching long-out-of-date CRT monitors like Easter Island sentinels. The view was over wet rooftops and crowns of Canary palms in a nearby garden, their wet swaying fronds a reminder of a better climate elsewhere.

  “They’re over beyond already,” said Fitz. “Frank and Tony. They’re only back a few minutes. Gave them a bit of time to get settled, water the horse and so forth.”

  “Well thanks,” said Minogue. “But we don’t want to get in the way of things.”

  Fitzgerald’s response was a complaisant smile.

  “Good God, no – plenty of time. Nothing pressing, as they say. Don is on an assault case, a wedding party thing. Imagine that: a row at a wedding. And Tony’s back from a big break-in, a builders’ supply and rental place.”

  Don – for Donegan, of course. He thanked Fitz, and headed back down the hall toward the stairs. Malone was by a window, still on the mobile. It was a serious-sounding conversation.

  “I know,” he heard Malone whisper, and repeat it. “I know, Sonia, I know.”

  Chapter 12

  The same Frank Donegan turned out to be an affable copper – either that or a first-class faker. There was something boyish and disarming about the freckles on the milk-white forehead, the wiry hair still more rusty than grey. He was still chuckling about taking the briefing in this café. “This is more like it,” he said. “Isn’t it, Tony?” Detective Garda Tony Ledwidge’s answer was a flexing of the eyebrows, and a shift of his shoulders against his car-coat. Another glance at this dark-haired, balding mesomorph with the ruddy complexion told Minogue that he was still very much on guard. Ledwidge, the senior man, was likely more allergic to any pixie dust from high-octane blow-ins like the great Inspector Minogue and his sidekick.

  Neither Donegan nor Ledwidge was fussy about coffee. Malone wanted his usual cup-a-tea-nuttin’-else. Minogue was willing to risk a latte. While they waited, Donegan eased into a yarn about a holiday that he and his missus had taken in Portugal. Minogue surveyed the premises, trying to ignore the dithering, go-nowhere jazz in the background. The stainless steel and black surfaces held no allure for him. Jars of preserves topped with bright pieces of cloth and finished with ribbons looked like props. Cake names were over the top: Maraschino Bliss? Magazines, dried flowers, cracked tile half-hidden under a table. The only other customer was a young woman writing in a notebook by the window, the familiar white iPod wires below her ears quivering as she wrote.

  The Donegans’ romantic getaway in Portugal had its epiphany in the town’s local hospital. Donegan pronounced the Portuguese nice people, and held them in no way responsible for his wife falling down the steps. Malone came up with a mild version of his holiday in Spain with his mother, the too-much-karaoke, too-much-sangria holiday. The atmosphere was cordial but still wary. Minogue still couldn’t get a fix on Ledwidge. Could it be that he might be one of those rarest of Irish birds, a Man of Sparing Words? He reminded himself of the goal again: rapport, getting off on the right foot.

  He took an opening from talk about floods in the West and slid into a safe topic, his efforts planting vegetables last Spring. All four policemen soon declared a preference for the cold to the wet in Ireland’s winters. Talk of rain and weather led handily to Killiney Hill Park, and the camp that Larkin had made there.

  “Well I tell you now,” Donegan said, his voice dropping. “I never saw anything like it in all my time. Never did. Like one of those Viet Cong spider holes.”

  He looked to Ledwidge for corroboration, before leaning back to allow the woman to put down the tray of coffees and the teapot.

  “A badger,” he said after she left. “The first thing I thought – a badger in his sett.”

  He put down the package of sugar and drew in a breath through his back teeth.

  “Did you get to the PM yet? The preexisting state of health bit?”

  “I ran by it fairly quick,” Minogue replied. “Not a well man to begin with?”

  “Liver half-gone,” Donegan said, beginning a count on his fingers. “Kidneys damaged. Blockages in arteries. Lung lesions? Something about deposits in his brain: ‘undetermined cognitive effects.’ Maybe the King of Ireland stuff was brain damage?”

  “A rough life I suppose” was all Minogue could think to say. “Hard on a body.”

  “And a heavy alcoholic. Bit of a miracle he was upright at all.” Minogue slid a lump of sugar into the froth that hid how small his latte really was.

  “How did you find that place of his, exactly?”

  Ledwidge seemed to take this as his cue to join in.

  “The information line,” he said. “A call-in, after the first public appeal.”

  “We’d heard he had some place there,” Donegan added. “His mates told us.”

  Ledwidge gathered himself and sat forward before he spoke. “These mates of his, they said they had no idea where the hideaway actually was.”

  “Yes indeed,” said Donegan. “Finding it turned out to be quite the job of work.” “Did you get a look inside it?” Donegan’s eyes widened.

  “We didn’t go poking, no way. Went by the book. Site secured, rang the Bureau.”

  The writing woman was scowling at her mobile now. Minogue had never figured out what exactly it was about people intent on their mobiles that made him dismayed.

  “But you could see into it a bit,” Ledwidge said. “Tight quarters, but still you’d fit a man inside. He had plastic for lining, sticking out from under the sleeping bag.”

  “He knew what he was doing,” said Donegan. “The trouble he went to, getting those bits of wood up there? Digging the thing out, camouflaging it? Quite something.”

  Minogue took a sip of the latte. There was a faintly burned taste to it somewhere.

  “It was something he was good at, I believe.”

  “Like the forts we’d build when we were kids,” Donegan said. “But better.”

  “When was it found, this camp place of his?”

  “The fourth day after, unfortunately. Two days of rain. Did you see the photos?”

  “Only a cursory once-over so far. But I ran through the
list of effects in it. Slim.”

  “The rotgut he never got to finish, the Chinese cooking wine. The stuff he had there, kid’s stuff, crisps, and sweets. And that old schoolbook, the history one, with his scribbles?

  ‘Viking hordes.’ ‘Wild Sea Raiders’? He had a thing for Vikings.” “Bit of a Lord of the Rings thing going on in his head there.”

  “Seen any of the psych reports yet?” Donegan asked.

  “We gave them the once-over,” Minogue replied. “Tell me though, do you think there could be more belongings of his somewhere?”