by John Brady
“I think they’ll understand your concerns. That’s what I’m trying to get across.”
“Like you’ll ‘pass it on,’ will you? That kind of ‘understand’? Well I wouldn’t put any shagging money on anything coming out of that in the next few years, would I.” It was a while before Higgins spoke again.
“Sorry about that,” he murmured, the breath whistling hard in his nose. “I get a bit carried away. It’s just that, well this kind of thing, it doesn’t happen to us every day.”
“It’s not something you’d want to get used to, is it?”
“Oh that’s a fact now. Do you know, it must be that stupid box. The television. I do see the cops – the police – getting down to business right away, and then going at it good-o, and next thing you know, it’s all done.”
“And then the ads come on again, right?”
“That’s the way of it all right. All wrapped up in an hour.”
“That’s the Yanks for you.”
“Gobshites, I’m telling you.”
“Well there are nice ones now, come on.”
“No! Us, I’m talking about – us watching that stuff.”
“Better than Frontline though.”
“Don’t be talking! Nothing worse! And do you know how much they pay him? And the other shower of shites there on RTE, the licence fee going up all the time…?” “You’re not alone in that, Mr. Higgins. You’re not alone.” His own words hung in his mind, but now as glib, ironic, and even wrong. Higgins was alone, that was the problem. That’s why he was phoning people.
“I’m not an iijit now,” Higgins went on in a hesitant voice now. “I know that’s the television and that. But still I thought, well you’d expect that maybe the Guards would be…you know?”
Minogue did know. He knew that there was no answer here too. And he also knew that Lar Higgins was embarrassed and afraid.
“Especially with things the way they were with Joey.”
“How do you mean?”
The harsh tone crept back into Higgins’ tone.
“Oh come on now. You’re the real Guard, aren’t you. Like those little questions you had this morning. You’re still at it.”
“You mentioned Joey, that’s all.”
“His situation,” said Higgins, impatiently. “The things he was into? You know about that surely. Other people know too, don’t they? That’s all I’m saying.” “Other people in his, em, situation?”
“What else? People would be thinking that there’s something in the house worth breaking in for – you know, that kind of stuff that Joey, God forgive me, was up to?”
“You mean drugs?”
“Did I say that?” Minogue waited.
“Do you get my meaning there, Sergeant?”
“Inspector. I do, I think. The house is locked, you said.”
“It is. I made sure the hall door was on the latch, didn’t I, and I pulled it closed. And I checked the back door, the kitchen door too, from the outside. That’s always locked anyway.”
“You weren’t inside the house?”
“Look, I have to tell you something. I don’t like going in there. The place is, well it’s not kept up, if you know what I mean. She’s a bit forgetful, let’s say.” Minogue remembered the tidiness of the Higgins’ home. “I should have, I suppose,” Higgins resumed. “But with the commotion, and the ambulance fellas and all that, I wasn’t thinking straight. And I didn’t want to get a turn myself, you know. I have to keep an eye on things, the breathing and so forth.”
Minogue was already tracing his way through Sallynoggin, finding the landmark church dome well above the terraces of houses. It wasn’t much of a detour really.
“Well, how could you get in anyway, even if you wanted to check on the fireplace or the cooker or the like?” “I have a key, didn’t I tell you?”
Chapter 28
A street lamp had already cast hard shadows on the footpath next to Larry Higgins’ home. The front room window was dark, but the curtains were slightly parted. Minogue stepped out into the chill evening air. Someone was cooking onions. Burning onions, actually. Kids’ voices echoed from a street nearby, along with the scuffs and dull thuds of a ball. A shadow moved from the gulf of darkness by the wall: a cat interested in the underside of Minogue’s Peugeot. Closing the gate behind him, he saw that the parting in the curtains had changed. The latch turned before his hand made it to the doorbell.
Inside, the house was tropical. The early news was on the radio. Larry Higgins looked less sure of himself than earlier, clasping and then unclasping the handle for his trolley set-up. Following Higgins to the kitchen then, Minogue took in some of what kept Larry Higgins attached to the planet. An egg-cup waiting next to a cup and saucer; a neatly folded evening paper, waiting to be read. Probably the same sight he’d see every day here at this time. Higgins ushered him into the sitting room. His voice was full of a fretful bravado.
“Me, I’m acting in good faith here. I want that on the record. People can say what they like. I’m only helping out. Doing my bit, helping the authorities. That’s what I’m doing. Right?”
“You took the words out of my mouth.”
“What’s that you have?”
Minogue waited for the battery charge display.
“It’s a camera.”
“You didn’t tell me you were coming here to take pictures.”
“Think of it as insurance,” Minogue said, pocketing it. “Safeguarding Mrs. McCarthy’s place. If anything were to disappear, or get moved?”
“Insurance?” said Higgins, his tone turning sharply skeptical. “Wait’ll you see the place next door first. Then let’s hear you talk about insurance.”
He fingered the tube under his nostrils, and paused to focus on his breathing.
“You stay here,” Minogue said to him. “I go and check everything’s okay next door.”
“I wouldn’t feel right doing that. No. I’m going along with you.”
He drew the small trolley out in front. “You know what this is?”
“Something to do with oxygen, I’m guessing.”
“A concentrator is what it is. On a normal day I’d be using this maybe once or twice during the day. But now, since this morning, I have to keep it going nearly all the time.”
He kept a keen eye on Minogue while he fumbled in his trouser pocket. He soon drew out keys and held them up. One was an old barrel key, with its long shank.
“Give me a minute to put on me coat,” Higgins said. Minogue waited on the path outside, opening his coat to get a measured dose of the cold evening air. Higgins grunted as he pulled the hall door shut, and tested it. He shrugged his coat over his shoulder more, and led with the trolley.
The scutch grass and the drifting hedge soaked up much of the light coming from the road. Night had transformed the skeleton of the motorbike into a mysterious artifact. Though the edges of the concrete path to the McCarthys’ hall door had given way in places, pallid gleams came from pebbles embedded in at and now worn smooth by the years.
“Junk everywhere,” he heard Higgins mutter. “Starts a thing, never finishes.”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at Minogue.
“She doesn’t notice the state of the place, Catherine. You know?”
The tremor in his voice was not just from his exertions. His hand wavered with the key, missing the lock twice. The hall door was the original, stout and heavy. Its flap scraped across the lintel and then went quiet as the door opened wide.
Higgins leaned in close. There was a tremor in his voice. “Dementia,” he said. “That’s the proper word.” The hallway seemed smaller and narrower than the Higgins’. He thought he heard a low groan coming from Higgins as he stepped in, his hand groping for the light switch. He was about to ask him if he was okay when a waft of stale air came to his nostrils. It was the smell of a closed-in house, of newspapers than had lain a long time in the sun. A heavier odour came to him then, what Kathleen called dishwasher breath.<
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The light here in the hallway was staying pale yellow. The walls were covered in heavily patterned wallpaper and interrupted by pictures. A coat stand, with a woman’s coat, and then a raincoat; an umbrella leaning against it also. A small, low hall table presented itself next near the foot of the stairs. There was a phone on top, and a written list of telephone numbers.
“I told you, didn’t I.”
“Told me what?”
“Mildew, damp! That roof of hers is leaking, I’m sure of it.” Minogue’s eyes had grown used to the light now. More details came at him. The wallpaper had been worn down in places, with nicks that showed plaster. A picture of the Sacred Heart hung next to the kitchen door, partnered by a fake plaster relief of hands joined in prayer. No holy water fount? A rug had been placed to cover cracks, or tears, in the linoleum.
“I’m leaving that light on all night,” Higgins said. “I don’t care.”
He used his elbow to push open the door next to the kitchen.
“Nothing’s on fire here,” he said. “That’s something, I suppose. You going in?”
The floor creaked at every step. Higgins hadn’t been exaggerating. It wasn’t just that there was hardly any counter space to begin with – every and any flat surface was covered. His mind reeled as he tried to sort what he was seeing. Two plastic basins, an unknown number of containers and jars, pots inside pots, a saucepan with some liquid that looked vegetabley. Old tea tins, bowls, a bag of sugar and another of flour. Bisto, instant coffee, soup packets. An electric kettle with brown stains near the seam. Higgins’ tone had become subdued. “It’s no use telling her. No use.”
The fridge was one of those old backbreaker models from decades ago, the type that Kathleen’s family called a tabernacle. Magazines and newspapers lay in bundles near a cupboard. No shortage of holy pictures: he recognized St. Therese, ‘The Little Flower.’ St. Christopher showed of course, carrying You-Know-Who across a stream. Chritso-ferens.
“How does she heat the place?” he asked Higgins.
“That bloody electric fire that she moves around. She used to burn turf and coal like the rest of us. But not for years. That electric fire’s the thing that keeps me worried.”
The table was 1960s Formica, chipped at the edges. Woman’s Own magazines, sewing things. A cutting board, a bread box. An abandoned breakfast lay in a corner of the table. Higgins was waiting for Minogue at the doorway. “I’m not touching a thing,” he said. “Not a thing.” He gestured toward the open door to a sitting room. A fold-out clothes dryer surrounded what Minogue supposed was the fireplace. Angled a little toward it was a sofa covered by either a bedspread or a blanket, home to knit cushions at the either end.
“Take a walk in there and you’ll see that damned electric fire, the bane of my life, in behind them clothes she has hanging up.”
The television in the corner – Bush still made televisions? – had the lurid plastic from thirty years ago. A small coffee table topped by a doily and a vase of plastic flowers kept company with the single armchair. Behind it rose heavy-looking curtains, their gold and floral pattern fading in long lines along the hems.
“Pull them closed, will you?”
Minogue made his way around the clothes. There was no man’s stuff. He tried harder then to trick his mind into not noticing the floppy knickers and the drooping nylon stockings. There was the electric fire that haunted Larry Higgins. He had to tease the curtain runners by a kink in the rod.
“She doesn’t have a Hoover. It broke on her last year. I gave her a loan of mine once, I said, ‘Get Joey to do it for you.’ But I never heard her use it.” “Did Joey stay here all the time?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him every day, did I?” Minogue’s eye had come to rest on the picture above the mantelpiece. It was a thatched and whitewashed cottage, with a hill behind and clouds galore. A boreen led off curving into a green and gold distance. A donkey stood in the middle distance, creels loaded with turf.
“A Galway woman originally, you said.”
“She is. Not Galway city, she’ll tell you right away. Somewhere out there though.” “Do you know if she smokes?”
“I know that she doesn’t. She isn’t a thick like me, or like I was anyway.”
Minogue turned to him.
“I’ll have a look in the other room there, the front room.” A table covered by a plastic gingham pattern had been pushed up under the window. There were glasses and delph in the dresser, china knick-knacks, a few small framed photos.
“Joey and her,” said Higgins. “In better days. The Isle of Man, I think.”
The face on this JJ McCarthy was a fuller version, a relaxed version, of the sharp-featured one that the database had thrown up on-screen back at the station.
“It is,” said Higgins. “Yes, he had a big moustache like that. They all did then. Now I know what you’re thinking, but that’s him. He lost a lot of weight over the years. And you know why too, don’t you. Here, what are you doing?”
Minogue examined the cutlery and the serviettes in the top drawer, and ran his hand under the folded serviettes.
“Making sure there’s nothing going to catch fire,” he said. He opened the drawer beneath. Table cloths, place mats, a pack of cards. No booze or ashtrays anywhere downstairs then. No mobiles, no laptops, no camera gear.
“If they ever ask me,” said Higgins, “I’ll have to say yes, you know. About this.” “If who ever asks?”
“The other Guards. The ones supposed to find out about Joey, if he was done in.”
“Did you ever see JJ – Joey – using any gear? Cameras? A computer, maybe?” Higgins shook his head.
“No sign of that cat,” he said then. “That’s good news, if she’s started locking it out.”
“Why’s that?”
“The cat pisses all over the place, is why. Can’t you smell it?”
Minogue headed back to the kitchen and stood there just inside the doorway, and pondered. It’d be a half an hour easy just doing the most basic search here. “Are there windows upstairs?”
“Of course there are windows upstairs. What are you thinking?”
“I’ll go up then so, and make sure they’re locked.” It was the standard straight run up, steep, over a fraying carpet runner to where the last few steps turned to gain the landing. Every few steps offered more pictures of Irish country life. He paused to examine one. It was the Spanish Arch in Galway, with men in caps and bánín jumpers sitting around chatting. Aran islanders he supposed. The bleak grandeur in the next picture was surely Connemara.
He stopped a few steps short of the landing. There was as different air here, a hint already of rankness, the smell of bed warmth from a sick-room, or neglected laundry.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for windows.”
“It doesn’t look like it from here.”
He made the final steps and stopped again on the landing proper, and he switched on the lights. The fittings in the toilet were original to the house, with brown rust-lines fanning out from under the lip of the bowl. Sections of the enamel in the bath were yellowed and edging into brown, with bare spots revealing the blue beneath. A shower head at the end of a grey rubber hose lay curled on a ledge. No cabinet for stuff, just a narrow glass shelf above the sink loaded with small jars of cream and two tall plastic containers of shampoo. But he had spotted his first signs of a man’s belongings there, a can of shaving form and an opened package of disposable razors.
“Look up at the ceiling there. Go on, look.” The grey stain coming in from the corner of the ceiling next looked like a cloud. The black spots at its edges were the indeed the mould that Higgins fretted about.
“You see? That’s going to give any day. In on top of her.”
He crossed the hall, and bracing himself, he pushed open the back bedroom door. A bottle of holy water from Knock shrine on the window sill, doilies on a dresser under a bottle of 4711 cologne. The wardrobe door
hung open a little. A picture of Mary with the infant Jesus on her knee presided over the small double bed. The wall over the dresser had that serenity prayer and a wedding picture from long ago. Slippers, a nightgown on the bed. An alarm radio, more magazines, a crossword book. A small book with a string bookmark – a prayer book.
“Is her window locked there?” Minogue swore under his breath.
“Thanks for reminding me,” he replied then. “I’m going to check that now.”
He ignored the sight that came through the banisters to him as he walked back across the hall: Larry Higgins’ upturned face, his beady, suspicious eyes squinting against the light overhead. The door handle ground as he pulled it down.