Wonderland: An Inspector Matt Minogue Mystery (The Matt Minogue Series Book 7)

by John Brady

  He tried to find a pattern to the grime that was collected on the window. Malone was out there somewhere, waiting for his call. One disaster at a time, thank you.

  “Can we move on so,” he said.

  Her delay registered with him. She spoke in a thin voice, slowly.

  “I think there’ll be more,” she said.

  He remembered a ditty that Kilmartin had sung one night late, after getting an admission from a woman who killed her friend.

  ’Tis true that the women are worse than the men,

  Right fol tight fol, ditty aye day

  They go down to hell and come right back again . . .

  With your right fol die, ditty fol die, right fol tight fol…

  He waited for her to break her stare down the hall, to say something. Two sirens came faintly to him from somewhere in the south city, losing and then regaining their synchronic yowling. He saw a squad car tearing by a gap between buildings.

  A detective with a hippie moustache under which he had tucked two desserts last week in the cafeteria while Minogue and Fiona Hegarty had a getting-to-know-you lunch came around the corner wrestling with his jacket.

  “Did you hear,” he said. “Someone’s after shooting people by the Aliens Office there on Mount Street.”

  “The Aliens Office?”

  “A few minutes ago. Some fellas went all out. Shotguns, the whole bit.”

  He squeezed past and he was gone, his jacket still half on.

  “Look,” Minogue said. “She’ll sign, we get her solicitor. Are you okay with that?”

  “But she waived, Cig.”

  Cig: that had only started a few years ago. Cig for Cigire, the Irish for Inspector, used to be something only a Sergeant would try.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But she’s not the full shilling in there, I’m thinking.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Stress, duress, whatever we can call it.”

  “She could flip that handy enough, Cig.”

  “She’s ready to confess to the Kennedy assassination, to my way of thinking.”

  “It’s a cod. She’s playing for sympathy. That’ll change.”

  “Change her statement is it? Or her solicitor could?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s happened.”

  “What, now?”

  “Come on. A barrister pumps that up. Suddenly we get hit with Improper Caution to the Suspect or it’s a constitutional case. She walks. We bang our heads off the nearest wall for an hour.”

  Minogue listened to the sirens fading, joining, separating in the distance. He wanted out then and there. He thought about the resignation letter it had taken him a week to word-process on the sly.

  “You really see her doing that, do you.”

  “It’s possible. She’s no daw, is she. She knows she’s a goner. She might be trying to get ahead of us already. Mitigation at least.”

  Minogue strained to listen to another siren. Mongoloid, that was the word they used for Down’s, he remembered. Jennifer Halloran’s brother was thirty-seven. They lived that long now? Malone must have been drunk when he left the Garda Club, must have. He’d better phone Pat.

  Fiona Hegarty was saying something to him.

  “I still say we go ahead. We get what we can. We can reasonably assume she’s a bit of an operator. I mean, five years, she kept at it, yeah?”

  He looked away from the closed door of the interview room. The “yeah?” had annoyed him mightily.

  “Well,” he said. “I still say we have enough.”

  “She stole thirty something thousand quid that we know of. More, maybe.”

  “It took her five years. She’s not a crime wave.”

  Fiona Hegarty took a step back, and leaned against the wall. She rubbed her nose in a way that Minogue knew wasn’t the thoughtful way she tried to affect.

  “I’ll call the duty counsel,” he said.

  She pushed off from the wall and she turned the door handle in one motion. He’d expected a glare at least.

  He followed her in. Jennifer Halloran, bookkeeper and soon to be felon, gave him a blank look.

  “I’m phoning your counsel, Miss,” he said.

  She didn’t get it. Detective Garda Fiona Hegarty was turning a page on her clipboard. Squash league, Minogue was thinking, marathons, computers, career goals. An MBA was the way to go.

  “It’s someone to advise you,” he said. “To represent you.”

  “But I don’t need one, do I?”

  Jennifer Halloran looked to Garda Hegarty for a signal but none came. For all the wrong reasons, a bright spot was starting in Minogue’s day.

  “You might consider phoning you mother soon too,” he said.

  What Shapes She Had Seen

  Eileen Magee felt well able for the two detectives. They had gotten her dander up about the fox.

  “I was reared in the country,” she told the skinny one. Collins was his name, she remembered. He was the one she’d taken a liking to. He had those doe eyes that reminded her of the kids in intensive care.

  “My father, God rest him, said they were vermin, the foxes.”

  “You didn’t see it do anything to the body, did you.”

  She turned to the Sergeant, Tunney. Maybe he took his cue from Gene Tunney the boxer. The shiny baldness pushed through the few hairs at the front. Impatient wasn’t the worst of it with him.

  “I saw it standing there,” she said, “and it looking at me. But I didn’t see it do anything.”

  “To the ‘bundle,’” Tunney said. “Your first thought, right?”

  “I knew it was the girl. It was in the paper, when she was missing.”

  Tunney made a note of something. Eileen looked around the room. She had fairly trotted up the laneway to the road, out onto Whitebeam Road. The heart had been leaping out of her chest, imagining the fox might be following her. Not wanting to think what it would have done to the girl. The relief she’d felt when she spotted the woman of the house, gardening. Sat her down here in this lovely conservatory, and believed her, right away. The calm voice making the phone calls, the first Garda car pulling into the driveway within minutes.

  It was Collins who had just spoken to her.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, are you all right going ahead now with us here?”

  “I’m grand. I mean, I’m not going to, you know.”

  Collins gave her a wan smile.

  “Fold up on you, or that.”

  “You think one of the boys was a Sean, was it,” Tunney said.

  “The bigger lad, the taller lad called him some name, I think it was Sean.”

  But it was the little lad who told me. A girl was sleeping over there, or words to that effect.

  Tunney read something he had written and then he closed his notebook.

  “If you’re able, Miss Magee, would you come out with us and show us the way you came to here.”

  “To this house?”

  “From the time you got off the bus. Could you maybe do that for us?”

  Eileen had forgotten that Nóirín, the woman of the house, was sitting in the television room with the doors open. Nóirín looked over at her with a strained smile.

  Eileen thought of the shopping bags she’d left down near the bushes. There was cheese that’d go bad for certain.

  The Guards stood up and went into the hall. Noising came over and knelt down beside her. Eileen studied the face. She had a country accent, her kids reared and out at college. The roots of her hair were still red. Eileen managed a smile. Why did it take a situation like this to bring you into the company of someone nice? It was that though that made her sob.

  Noising gave her another hanky. She asked her if she would like to go to the toilet before they headed out. Eileen said she didn’t. She stood up and took a deep breath. She had overheard one of the detectives earlier, and words she’d taken to be about her, “a great oul warrior.” She didn’t know if she could go back down there to t
he park though.

  “Would you come down with me?”

  “I will.”

  Eileen felt the hand under her elbow. She grasped it, wrapped it inside her arm, and held it. It was like school friends years ago.

  The Guards were waiting in the hall.

  “I want to know something,” Eileen said to Collins. “Is it the girl went missing?”

  “It could well be,” Tunney said. “But we need to find out for sure.”

  “And is she still there below.”

  Tunney nodded.

  “It takes time,” he said. “Certain things have to be done.”

  There were small groups standing by the top of the laneway. Eileen stepped out smartly. She felt Noirin's hand tighten on her arm. There was that yellow strip of tape at the top of the laneway, a Guard watching not far behind.

  A priest stepped out of a car across the road. He reached the tape before the two women. The Guard lifted the tape and the priest stepped in. He reached into a box he had carried and took out a pyx; he kissed it and put it around his neck. The Guard at the tape took off his hat and blessed himself.

  Eileen was full of questions. What if the girl wasn’t Catholic, who had called the priest, how long would she be lying here?

  Tunney held up the tape for her.

  “This is where you came up?”

  “It is,” she said. “Right here. Can I ask you something?”

  There it was again, she saw, the irritation. He nodded.

  “Nothing happened there on account of the fox, did it? I couldn’t bear to think.”

  Tunney glanced at Noising. She whispered something Eileen didn’t catch.

  He looked back at her. As if he hadn’t a mother of his own, this fella. He might have a soft spot, a tiny one, but enough, she thought.

  “No,” he said. “It doesn’t look like it.”

  Eileen looked down the lane. There was blue sky and fluffy white clouds now behind the spread branches that hung over the glade where the dead girl was. What shapes she had seen when she was a child herself all those years ago. These billows looked like nothing now.

  A Spot of Bother

  Minogue watched Malone horsing down the full breakfast. He had a scratch near his right eyebrow. Yes, he’d slept in the car last night. No, he hadn’t checked for messages.

  “So,” Minogue said finally. “You were out on manoeuvres last night. Go on.”

  Malone glanced up from the table at him.

  “I wasn’t exactly drinking me way into Bolivia, boss. No more than you were.”

  “But I went home, Tommy, like the honest culchie that I am. I didn’t go out on the town and get into a row in a chipper.”

  “Wait a minute. Did I leave a message on your machine that said, ‘Give me a fu— give me a lecture.’ Did I?”

  “No,” Minogue said. “It said ‘I had a massive big feed of drink with the fellas I work with, who are Guards, by the way, and shouldn’t even consider trying to cover up for me. Then I went around to my girlfriend’s place, decided I needed fish and chips. Being as it was only one o’clock in the morning, which is exactly when all the headers in Dublin are spilling out of the pubs looking for trouble. Yours Sincerely, Perplexed, Dublin 12.’”

  Malone gave him a blank stare.

  “Well, it could have been worse,” he said. “I could have lost the head entirely.”

  Minogue raised an eyebrow.

  “You don’t understand,” Malone said. “I was managing grand, so I was. Sonia was working late at her parents’ place last night, the restaurant.”

  Minogue began to think of the new travel agent in Abbey Street again, the one who’d told him he could get him and his missus to Paris for a weekend, two hundred and fifty Euro all-in. No, he remembered, he wouldn’t go back there: he had almost forgotten the wink, the “how would the, uh, missus like that, then?”

  “And for another thing,” Malone said. “She’s not like that. You make it sound, well, you know what I’m saying?”

  Minogue gave him the eye. Knowharamsane?

  “You’re jealous in anyhow,” Malone murmured.

  “Am I now.”

  Minogue thought of Sonia’s way of laughing, how she always turned away. An Asian mannerism? Soon he’d ask though, why a woman from Macau studying for a degree, and working nights at her parents’ take-out, would want to be with the likes of Tommy Malone, a working-class Dublin git who worked in the Garda Drug Squad Central.

  “It’s obvious,” Malone said. “All the questions you were firing at her there that time, remember we bumped into you and Kathleen in Bewleys that night?”

  “Polite conversation, you gurrier. Something you wouldn’t know about being reared here in this place. In this infernal city.”

  Malone sat back and looked around the restaurant.

  “Oh Jaysus, will you listen to the tough talk here,” he said.

  Minogue felt the smile start. He had almost forgotten how much he missed Kilmartin sparring with Malone, how sly Malone’s digs could be.

  “I’m not Kilmartin you know,” Minogue tried. “They’ll be carrying you out of here on a stretcher in the finish-up, if I get going on you.”

  Malone yawned. The tension had ebbed already.

  “Suddenly you’re Jackie Chan or something, are you.”

  Minogue watched someone spill a handful of coins on the floor by the cashier. Pablo was on cash this morning, according to his nametag anyway. It had been a Polish fella the other day. Dublin: capital of Europe, by God. And now, two refugees were shot dead?

  Malone sat up and rested his elbows on the table between them.

  “Maybe he phoned another station,” he said.

  “We’d know by now, Tommy. They’re all redirected.”

  Malone looked down at the remains of a bun. Minogue took another sip of coffee and tried to hear more of the French coming from a group of students who’d just come off the escalator.

  “Anyway,” Malone said. “The point is, well, what I said to you this morning.”

  “Is there a warrant out on you.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “There isn’t. And I didn’t find any incident report at the station either.”

  “So far.”

  “So far.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, well I’d like to stay kind of paranoid. I find that works for me.”

  Minogue felt his annoyance return. Sure, Malone was under pressure. Since coming into Drugs Central he’d had a gun pointed at him. There was a lot of night work. He’d found two addicts who’d been dead nearly a week in a flat.

  “How’d Sonia take all this anyway?”

  Malone stopped running his hand through his hair.

  “She’s upset,” he said. “Can’t say as you’d blame her, can you.”

  Minogue watched one of the students fumbling for change at the cash.

  “Says I have issues.”

  “That sounds about right, I’m thinking.”

  “She says, well, I have to get more, you know, evolved. That sort of thing.”

  Minogue watched him push a cuticle down hard. Then Malone looked up.

  “This guy last night, he does odd jobs for Bobby Quinn. You know that name?”

  “Only what I read in the papers. Who’s the fella you clattered? You never told me.”

  “Doyle.”

  “You know him from before?”

  “Sort of, but not really. His mug is on the wall of a task force thing going on, I pass by them every day. That’s how I remember.”

  “A big thing, is he?”

  “Ah, he’s a massive iijit, a wannabe. Really - from planet arsehole, I’m telling you. Fancies himself. But he’s got form. Dealing, robbing houses. He got two years for assault on a barman, went after him with a bottle, man nearly bled to death. Then he shows up trying to start up rackets and his own gigs locally.”

  “Was he high last night?”

 
“Well, he was on a tilt for sure.”

  “More than that?”

  “There was a smell of booze off him. But he wasn’t falling around the place.”

  “Before you gave him the hiding, you mean.”

  “Ah, Christ you have the same look I got from Sonia. Give over, will you?”

  Minogue rested his chin on his knuckles. Malone took up a sugar packet, twisted it, and studied the spilled granules.

  “I think maybe there’s something else going on.”

  “What something else?”

  “He knew more than a scut should. He knew about the brother, Terry. He knew stuff that happened very recently, when Terry OD-ed and that. So. What am I thinking? I don’t know. But what I’m wondering is, maybe Doyle came on to me on purpose. Maybe someone sent him.”

  Minogue looked at the sugar.

  “He’s not the first,” Malone said. “You sort of getting the picture?”

  “Hardly. I’m after being fierce confused by the cleverality of yye Dublin jackeens.”

  “Look, there’s stuff we keep to ourselves. Just think: how does the Drug Squad get insider information and make busts and that? I mean it’s not high-tech, is it. We turn fellas, we get inside. We pay. We threaten. Okay?”

  “Well, what are you saying about this Doyle fella then?”

  “It’s a two-way thing, is what I’m trying to say. They try the same on us. It’s how they work. I got word last month something was going to happen to Terry. That it’d give me something to think about. Just a little phone call, a few words, from one of our ears. ‘Informants’ if you like the words that go on the receipts. Yeah?”

  “What’s Terry’s situation, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  Malone stared at what he’d done to the sugar pack.

  “Poxy,” he said. “Just poxy. Couldn’t be worse.”

  He glanced up at Minogue.

  “Me ma’s sure he won’t come out alive this time. She had to go back on sedatives, she’s in such a state. Me, I don’t know. I just don’t. He’s gone right down.”