by John Brady
Donegan settled his cup carefully on the table. His face turned thoughtful.
“Nothing so far,” he said. “And it’s been a while already now. Larkin never settled, really. We went back as far as we could on him. He shows up at various shelters and hostels in the cold months, but lots of times he wouldn’t stay, even in the winter. ‘A bolter,’ we were told. ‘Very touchy.’ He’d switch between the South City hostel and Crosscare, the back of George’s Street in Dun Laoghaire. Always coming back out this way.”
“Sure it’s around here that the poor divil started out, I suppose.”
Minogue heard no irony in Ledwidge’s murmured words.
“His family was well-to-do? Clarinda Park?”
“That’s it,” said Ledwidge. “But they’re long gone. The father, the judge, he’s gone these twenty year. Twelve years for the mother. Larkin’s sister is all that’s left.”
“Orna, in England.”
“That’s her,” said Donegan.
Minogue felt the caffeine begin its agitation in his chest in earnest now.
“Have you been up there recently?” he asked. “Up on the Hill?”
“No,” said Donegan. “The hideaway was filled in the end of July. ‘A hazard.’”
“The NBCI team gave it six days there,” Ledwidge added.
“Canvassing, like. And we had the uniforms there four days in a row after as well. Three weekends too.”
Malone blew on his tea again. Donegan watched him for several moments.
“So tell me,” said Minogue. “What do you make of the Facebook effort?”
Ledwidge shifted in his seat. A wry look came close to being his first smile.
“The ‘Green Man’ et cetera? The fourteen hundred and something ‘friends’?”
“But it’s all well meant,” said Ledwidge. “That’s the important thing.”
“Conor Reardon,” Donegan added. “Nice lad, a student. Save-the-world type.”
Minogue didn’t miss the hint, another signal they had done their due diligence.
“Still,” said Donegan. “Like Tony says, nice to see people care, even nowadays.”
Donegan put his cup on the table with an ahh. A hint of mockery glinted in his eye.
“You’d wonder what’ll be left standing, in the heel of the reel,” he said. “If it’s not the banks or the church, it’s shoot-outs on the street. What are we up to now? Twenty-seven this year, the gang stuff? Or is it twenty-eight?”
As if he didn’t keep score, Minogue reflected. He pressed his sombre, thoughtful nod into service. It wasn’t enough to stifle Donegan yet, however.
“Just when all the higher-ups are retiring in droves, to get ahead of the pension levy? All that know-how flying out the door…?”
Minogue took the ‘higher-ups’ to be a sly dig, a test. But Malone had had enough too, and it was his Dublin demi-drawl that cut short the moaning.
“I’ll tell youse what’ll be left. Lots of room for promotion. That’s what.”
This drew a soft cackle from Donegan. Minogue eyed the writer woman and tried to imagine what had her writing so keenly again. Maybe she was famous, that one who wrote those shopaholic books?
Mention of Facebook eased the talk back on the rails. “This Larkin Facebook effort?” said Donegan. “Well I could live without it. How’s pissing on the Guards going to help? We’re trying our best. Don’t they get it?”
Minogue shifted in his chair, and looked from Donegan to Ledwidge.
“Indeed. So, what, or who, is left standing here with this Larkin situation?”
Ledwidge drew in a breath, and let it swell his cheeks for several moments.
“Number one place to start was known persons,” he said.
“Larkin’s cronies. Trouble is, they’re alibied. Walshe was in a shed out in Dun Laoghaire, a building site gone bust there. McArdle, the other hobo, was along with him. A squat situation.”
“Simon Community did a soup run out there,” said Donegan. “It took us a couple of days to get a statement out of the Simon fella.” Several moments passed.
“That shed’s gone,” Ledwidge said. “It got out about them squatting there.”
“Can we get any forensics pointing at them?”
“Not so far we can’t,” said Ledwidge.
“Site yield? Or from Larkin’s belongings?”
“Tests on his gear all go back to Larkin,” Donegan replied.
“And him only. The same for effects on the person. There was other stuff they couldn’t do anything with.”
“Sorry about that, CSI fans,” Malone murmured. “We’ll go to the ad break now.”
His effort earned a dutiful smile from Donegan.
“Okay, his booze,” said Ledwidge then. “We sourced the place he got the cooking wine. The best we got is ‘don’t remember.’ We haven’t been able to budge that.”
“No sign of any weapon?” asked Minogue. “Implements, I should say?”
“The rock used on his noggin?” Donegan replied. “That same rock, that stone, it did away with the chance of a decent print from whoever did the kicking? Nope.”
“Any sense that whoever hit him with the rock was not the kicker, or kickers?”
Ledwidge twisted his ring slowly on his finger as he spoke. “Well this is the thing. We can’t be beating about the bush here.
The fact is, we still don’t know how many were involved. We just don’t.”
Ledwidge’s bluntness brought a small current of relief trickling into Minogue.
“Fibres, track casts, litter,” he went on. “All went to the Lab. But no go. No transfer on Larkin – even with him dragged into the bushes, nothing.”
“There’s an effort to hide him,” Minogue said. “Is he murdered in the daytime?”
“Larkin’s hefty,” said Ledwidge. “If there’s no accomplice, then this one doing the killing, and the dragging, and so forth, he has to be a bit of a Schwarzenegger.”
“Hooligan factor?” Malone asked. “Young fellas drinking, running wild there?”
“Not a peep about any carry-on like that on that day, or that evening. Nothing.”
“Any clear signs of an effort to cover up signs, or tracks?”
“Clear, no,” said Ledwidge, letting go the sugar bowl. “But no tracks either.”
“He was killed lying on his back? Those contusions, the fractures?”
“Right,” replied Ledwidge. “Somewhere along the line he’s turned on his belly.” “What did you make of that?”
Ledwidge sat forward a little, and glanced at Minogue.
“It could be him, or them, buying time to get away, making it look like he was having a snooze. But we see it connected to somebody going through his pockets.”
Donegan seemed to be ahead of Minogue’s next question.
“That bit of money he got every week,” Donegan added. “We wondered?”
“Did his cronies know he got that money?”
“None of them admitted to knowing it. Larkin could have kept it to himself.”
“It sounds like you have your doubts still though. How did Larkin actually get hold of this allowance? I haven’t reached that yet.”
“A bank in Dun Laoghaire. They had it waiting for him, every Wednesday.” “Any issues there?” Donegan shook his head.
“No. He went to the same one. She knew him awhile – not knewhim knew him. She was used to him. Never said much. Just came in, got his money, and out he went.”
“Is it connected to the sister, Orna? Was it out of a trust fund or something?”
“It was her money,” said Donegan. “The goodness of her heart? But how to square that with the fact that she didn’t come over for the funeral…?”
“Any issue about a will or that? An inheritance? Bad blood maybe?”
“No,” said Ledwidge. “The family had money, but it went in due course with the mother, and then the daughter. When the mother died, the house was sold, and the daughter – Orna – she bought
a place in London. He came back here around that time.” Donegan took a sip from his coffee and made a face. “The no-show at the funeral was an eye-opener,” he said.
“But when we got more background, you could see where she was coming from. Skeletons in the cupboard, is that the expression – Larkin, I mean. She hadn’t been back to Dublin since the mother died. Here, Tony: what was the word she used again?”
“Impertinent,” said Ledwidge.
“That’s it. I keep on forgetting it. We were trying to ferret out any money angle, and up comes this: ‘That’s a highly impertinent question.’ But that was when it came out that she was the one doing the allowance for him.” With that, Donegan shrugged and eyed his coffee. “The funeral was small,” said Ledwidge. “The priest, of course. McArdle and Walshe, his on-again-off-again cronies. People from the shelter, and social worker types. A nun, Sister Immaculata, she works with the down-and-outs. But that was it really.”
“Cousins?” Minogue asked. “Neighbours from the old days? Family friends?”
Ledwidge shook his head. He rubbed the sides of his cup.
Summoning a genie, Minogue wondered. The quiet lasted a bit long, even for Minogue.
“Did I get the PM right,” he said. “Killed eighteen to thirty-six before discovery?” “That’s right.”
“And do we have any notion of time elapsing here? Did our kicker, or our kickers, did they go away, and come back later to drag Larkin off into the bushes?”
At least Donegan and Ledwidge didn’t shake their heads in synchrony.
“A good number of walkers up there on the Hill, I imagine,” he said to Ledwidge.
“True for you. The cross-checking took until the end of July.”
He scratched the back of his neck and gave Minogue a bashful glance.
“Bit of a land after all that to see, well you know by now, how little we have.”
“That’s the real world for you,” Minogue said.
“We do case review the end of every month,” Donegan said, sitting up straight as though to face down his colleague’s doleful conclusions. “We’ve done four public appeals now. Got it on Crime Call again, when it got started up again after the summer.”
***
The walk back to the Garda station followed Castle Street’s curves. Minogue found himself paired with Donegan, and whether it was the unhurried pace, or the company, he began to suspect that he might begin to like this street a little. He clung to a belief that a hint of seaweed on the breeze was helping in this regard.
It had gotten colder, and the usual mid-afternoon trickery with the light was playing itself out. It seemed to be steady and even brightening, but the November daylight was in fact on its last legs, and the air had already taken on the metallic tone that would send the world tipping toward evening at any moment. The woman behind the wheel of the white Range Rover idling next to a tanning salon had that bored, even angry look. The sharp hairdo hanging over one eye, the starkly thin neck and shoulders: a clone of what’s her name, the Beckham one?
Minogue pulled his coat tighter. They passed the wellness place again, the poster of the woman with stones on her back. Hadn’t Kathleen said she’d like to try that?
“That nun mentioned earlier,” Donegan said then. “You know about her, right?”
“She’s at that drop-in place there, you mentioned.”
“Right. She’s not sending any fan mail our way, that Sister Immaculata.”
“Is she any help to us?”
“Well she knew Larkin. He was ‘a client’ at the drop-in place.”
“Knew him well? Knew him to see?”
“Well she gave us what she had. It was no great shakes.”
“She’s a good age,” Donegan went on. It wasn’t a compliment. “Yes indeed, a good age to be doing what she’s doing out there. But sure you know the nuns.”
“Concerning this case,” Minogue tried. “Or more in general, you mean?”
He slowed to scan the headlines on the newspapers. “Gave me a lecture – a sermon?” he said. “A bit of that ‘social justice’ stuff.”
Castle Street had ended, and a glut of traffic held the four on the footpath while they waited to cross. Malone’s eyes followed an Audi as it slid soundlessly by them.
“Eighty-five thou,” he said to no-one in particular. Minogue turned to Donegan.
“I meant to ask you earlier on, but I forgot. A JJ Mac. McCarthy, a journalist?”
Donegan smiled, and looked over his shoulder at Ledwidge.
“Farty McCarthy, Tony,” he said. “Told you. Another pint you owe me.”
“Sounds like you know him, or of him,” Minogue said.
“Oh we know him all right. A chip on his shoulder the size of a house.”
Minogue followed his lead crossing between cars. The path ahead hit a narrow stretch, and Donegan worked around a pram. The au pair was Asian, her face pinched and frowning as though braced for more gusts. Gob open and head back, the child slept.
“Whatever else he is,” said Donegan, interrupting himself to regain the footpath with a quick skip. “A journalist he ain’t. Maybe in his dreams, he is. But what he really is, is a newspapers delivery man. They’re not even newspapers, they’re advertising rags.”
Minogue stepped onto the roadway to allow Malone and Ledwidge to catch up.
“And by the way,” Donegan, added, “he has a record – imagine that. That explains a lot about him in my book, the grudge he has with the Guards. We gave him the bum’s rush, good-bye and pip-pip and mind-your-head leaving. We were on to him.”
“On to his…?”
“His M.O. He’s on the prowl for anything to make us look bad – anything. And if he can’t find dirt, he’ll make it up. So any chance he gets, off he goes to pelt as much shite as he can at the Guards, hoping any bit of it’ll stick. That right, Tony?”
“He’s out to provoke you,” said Ledwidge. “That’ll give him a story then.”
“So this McCarthy is not in the picture,” Minogue said. “This Larkin case?”
“I spoke with him,” Donegan replied, pausing as a gust of wind watered his eyes. “Had to. It’d cause more trouble not to anyway, the stink he’d raise. Oh boy, what a treat that was. He only found out about Larkin maybe six or eight weeks ago but he’s at it like a terrier. ‘When can the public expect this?’ and ‘Why is this case shelved?’”
Donegan stopped, and he fixed an earnest look on Minogue. “And he has this look on his face when he’s talking – he sneers at you. It took all I had to be civil, let me tell you. I says to him, look, I says, if you have something to offer the Garda Síochána in the matter, it’s your civic duty to assist. The reaction? He laughs.”
“Laughs at…?”
“Who knows? My choice of words? Me trying to stay polite? No – he’s trying to get a rise out of us. But I let him know that there’s ways to be civil here.”
Minogue waited.
“Says I, ‘If you’d care to go and ask your associates for info well that might help.’ ‘Associates,’ you know? His criminal record, like?”
“Ah. And how did that go over with him?”
“Well he got it, I tell you. Oh yes. It wiped that smile right off his face.”
“Had he anything to offer at that stage? To your, ah, suggestion?”
“Bugger-all,” said Donegan, almost cheerfully. “Not a sausage.”
They turned onto Tubbermore Road. The steps and railings of the Garda station began to come into view.
“Been quiet since,” said Donegan. “Maybe he’s moved on to another cause. But I’d say he’s nosing around somewhere, just waiting and hoping for us to screw up. I’d give him a few days before he hears you’re here, and then he’ll find a way to get to you.”
He looked back at Ledwidge.
“Tony? A fiver says Farty McCarthy’ll be back to his tricks before the day is out tomorrow – once he hears about the lads here. Will you take me up on it?”
Ledwidge�
�s reply was a toss of his head. The wind had brought up his complexion, and the wry expression put Minogue mind of a farmer leaning on a gate. Donegan inclined a little toward Minogue then.
“I have my own theory about the likes of McCarthy,” he said. “Remember punk? That’s him. He’s in a time-warp, still thinks he’s, I don’t know, twenty or something. Still listens to the Ramones, still wears the look. The world’s moved on, but he hasn’t. So where does he gravitate to? The whinge corner is where. ‘Journalist’? You could call it anything, I suppose. Fact is, he’s a delivery man. He delivers papers.”