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

by John Brady

  “A right nest of rogues, it seems.”

  “Well maybe, and maybe not. Who knows nowadays, the way things are going.”

  “You’d know, Tommy. I hope. Drugs Central?’

  “If you only knew. That’s the whole other thing.”

  Ting, Minogue heard. De ho-al udder ting. He watched Malone lock the Nissan, check the doors.

  “Look,” Malone said to him at the door to the stairs. “I just want to hear what Quinn has to say. He has to react, doesn’t he. I’d be expecting a bit of a performance from him. I mean the way we marched in to his gaff there yesterday. Show the flag, right?”

  Canning was smoking a cigarette by the door on Level 3. There was a faint smell of urine from the stairwell mixed in with a diesel tang and what Minogue had taken to be a dull smell of cement that never left. He took in Quinn’s eyes moving around Malone and then to him. Early thirties, he thought, well preserved, an innocuous look to him.

  “So,” Malone said. “You couldn’t get hold of the Complaints Department or what.”

  “Better to go to the source, I find,” Quinn said. “Isn’t that why you set this up?”

  Canning nodded at Minogue.

  “You’re the fella with the bug, right? Make sure you switch it on now.”

  “Thanks,” Minogue said. “I’m actually the SWAT team today.”

  “You need to sort out a few things,” Malone said to Quinn.

  “Me?” Quinn asked. “You’ve got that arseways. You’re the one needs to do that.”

  “Like, what?”

  “Like what you said at my place the other day.”

  “What was that?”

  “You know what you said. Don’t pretend you don’t. Those allegations.”

  “Where is that little go-for of yours anyhow,” Malone said. “Is that what the whinge is about?”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Doyle. Who do you think I’m talking about?”

  “He’s nothing to me.”

  “That’s not what he says.”

  “I don’t know what he says, and I don’t care. Far as I’m concerned, he’s a header.”

  “Oh? Well, he says he’s passing on a message from you.”

  “Well, anyone can play Postman frigging Pat, I suppose.”

  “Oh no,” said Malone. “According to him he’s your right-hand man.”

  “When did he come up with that one?”

  “Over in Cafolla’s the other night, that’s when.”

  Minogue was watching Canning smoking. How he plucked it from his lips, how he fired out the smoke. Rubbing his lips with the back of his hand. The head stuck out on him, like a bull.

  “Sancho Panza,” Minogue said.

  “What?” snapped Canning.

  “A fella, a sidekick of a famous—”

  “I don’t know any Sanch O bleeding anybody. And I don’t care who he is. Matter of fact, you can stuff—”

  Quinn held up his hand.

  “He’s a gobshite,” he said. “Doyle is. I told you.”

  Quinn eyed Minogue.

  “Do I know you,” he said.

  “Don’t you and your crowd know everyone?”

  “There is no ‘our crowd,’” Quinn said. “That’s part of why you need to sort yourself out over these allegations. Harassment and that.”

  “Oh right,” said Minogue. “‘I resemble those remarks.’ Grand, so. Now I get it.”

  Quinn gave him a blank look. He gets it, Minogue believed. Knows enough not to take the bait here. Well, fine and well.

  “No crowd, is it,” Malone said. “Well, what about arse-face standing beside you, there? Could it really be the real Beans Canning, mastermind, break-in and armed robber of the year 1989 or so?”

  “You’re off your head, you iijit,” Canning said.

  Malone stepped forward. Canning drew himself up, shook his bracelet free.

  “Here,” Malone said to him. “Let me see that arm there—routine check.”

  “Get to hell away from me.”

  “Why? What have you got to hide there?”

  “If you weren’t hiding behind the uniform I’d show you more than me arm, so I would.”

  “Bet you Doyle knows some things though,” Malone said. “Wouldn’t you say? He’s overdue a visit—yeah, we should bring him in and get a serious chat session going.”

  “Wouldn’t be anything new for youse to stitch a fella up,” Canning said. “Would it.”

  “We could give him a few days to think things over,” Malone went on. “Amazing what a few days’ hold-over will do.”

  “That works both ways,” Quinn said. “If you think about it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning a fella can get himself into a bad patch if he can’t get what he’s used to.”

  Minogue shifted and leaned against a new spot of concrete. Canning let the smoke out slowly now.

  “Tell me about that little concept there, why don’t you,” Malone said.

  “I agreed to meet you for one thing and one thing only,” Quinn said. “That’s to tell you that I don’t appreciate people spreading rumours. Especially cops.”

  “I’m here to dare you to tell me that there’s nothing to them.”

  “Just because you decide to take something from a drug addict seriously—”

  “—Oh a ‘drug addict’ now, is it? You’re selling him down the river pretty frigging fast there, aren’t you.”

  “If this is the best youse can do then it’s pitiful,” Canning said.

  “Shut up you,” Malone said.

  “I’m a witness to this harassment and all.”

  “Am I talking the fella runs this circus,,” Malone said, “or the bleeding clown?”

  “Calm down there, Guard. You’re getting hysterical.”.

  Malone’s hands were out of his pockets now. Minogue pushed away from the wall. He kept his eyes on Canning.

  “Doyle didn’t make all that up,” Malone said. “So forget the citizen act here.”

  “I told you,” Quinn said. “Doyle’s nothing to me.”

  “Wasn’t he driving one of your vans a while back?”

  “He nearly wrecked it. I got rid of him. After I saw that he was a user.”

  “What was he delivering for you, bananas?”

  “As a matter of fact he was—delivering fruit to the shops down the country. What did you think, they grew the bananas down in Sligo and that?”

  “What, you’re going to tell me that Doyle’s just spreading rumours about you to get back at you for letting him go?”

  “I’m telling you that the man has problems.”

  “Oh, we know what problems all right. Problems in the banana trade, right?”

  Quinn looked over at Minogue.

  “I hope you got that part on the tape,” Canning said to Minogue. “’Cause he’s bananas himself, you know, your pal here.”

  “Okay,” Malone said. “Here’s what: lodge a complaint, why don’t you. Go ahead. ‘Two Guards came the heavy at my place yesterday.’ Yeah, go ahead. ‘And they said not nice things about me. Hurt my feelings. My self-image.’”

  “You couldn’t say anything decent about your own mother,” Canning said.

  “Oh it talked again,” Malone said.

  “Screw you, Malone, and your junkie brother too.”

  Malone was by Quinn too before Minogue had even managed a step. He had Canning backed to the wall with two shoves. Quinn stepped out of Minogue’s way.

  “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about,” Quinn said. “Out of control. Mad.”

  Malone let Minogue steer him away.

  “Add that to your whinge,” Malone called over to Quinn.

  “I think your personal problems are getting in the way of your job,” said Quinn.

  “But you won’t, will you,” Malone went on. “You won’t be complaining at all, because you want to just get on with your banana delivering, don’t you. And that’s why Doyle s
kipped, because you told him to get the hell away from here because he had a big mouth, because he knows things, right?”

  Minogue stepped back from Malone.

  “Look,” Malone said. “If I find one speck about you or any of your crowd doing anything in Mountjoy, anything to do with my brother, you’ll know all about it.”

  Quinn seemed to be considering saying something. Then he shook his head.

  Minogue watched Canning catch up with him on the stairs.

  “I’m not codding,” Malone muttered. “There’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Are you finished,” Minogue asked him.

  Malone turned. For a minute Minogue wondered if Malone was going to apologize or something.

  “Okay,” Malone murmured. “Not exactly according to plan there, was it.”

  “What plan,” Minogue said.

  Was There Something else?

  Grogan arrived in Newry just before five. The checkpoints were gone for eighteen months now. He had no trouble spotting the towers and the antennae along the way. It was almost a puzzle, a game. There was an RUC Land Rover in a side street as he came in the Belfast Road.

  More than an hour in the car would have him in rough shape for a day afterward, not to speak of a lousy night. His hip, where the bullet had shattered, had more of the bone growth on it since the last x-ray. The nerves were never going to get right there. He didn’t want to go near the hospital for a while anymore. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t much interest in driving either.

  He let the engine do the braking on the way down Hill Street. The car park was only half full, to the side near the bank. He checked his mobile and slipped it in his pocket. It was the usual hurry-up-and-wait getting out of the car.

  There was always plenty of life on Hill Street. This time of day it was people getting their shopping in before teatime. There wasn’t a uniform in sight the whole length of the street. He wondered where the police cameras were. Newry, he thought, how well it looked lately, this the biggest Catholic town outside of Derry.

  He concentrated on where his stick was landing on the footpath. He didn’t look back into the faces that came his way on the street. He rested for a count of ten, and watched two girls looking in a window and whispering to one another. He made it to McNaughton’s in his next effort, and he stopped just short of the window. The smell of sawdust and suet and fresh, cold meat brought him back to his childhood. He heard the chop of a cleaver from inside the shop. There was no sound like it, if you thought about it, he decided.

  When he was ready, he moved to the window and looked in. Artie McNaughton was wrapping up something for an old woman. He looked over and he nodded. Roe was working at a table, wrapping something in plastic, but he was watching him in a mirror. Grogan continued to the doorway.

  “How’s the form, Liam,” McNaughton said.

  “Could be worse, I suppose.”

  Roe nodded at the door to the freezer. He waited for Grogan to get by him. There was a chair there for him next to the cupboard.

  Grogan held out the envelope. He studied Roe’s hat, watched him slide it behind his apron. The hats they all wore now, but like some Brit from an oldie film set in the tropics; EU health regulations, no doubt.

  “Well, that’s that,” Grogan said.

  Roe’s eyes narrowed a little. He looked sideways at Grogan with what might have been a smile.

  “For the time being,” he said.

  Grogan’s hip had loosened a bit from the drive, but still the ache was getting stronger. Roe settled his hat over his forehead.

  “That fella is organized,” he said. “Quinn. I’ll give him that. And I don’t think he has any bad habits. No.”

  “You could work with him again,” Grogan said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Roe shook his head.

  “That I doubt, that I doubt.”

  “It didn’t turn out?”

  “Oh no, I really couldn’t say that, now could I. Oh no, quite professional, in actual fact.”

  Grogan waited.

  “Well,” said Roe. “One gets a certain sense of something, I don’t know now. An instinct, you might say, but that word doesn’t do it justice. No, it doesn’t.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “That would be close, yes it would. But he might be a very nice fella. He certainly showed no lack of consideration in the whole business.”

  “Consideration.”

  “I mean he had the details right. Can’t fault him for that.”

  “You don’t trust them down there.”

  “Well now,” Roe said, and allowed himself a slight smile. “Does anyone?”

  Grogan looked around at the tubs and hooks, the white coats and aprons hung by the door. He wondered if Roe had ever used the freezers here for any of his jobs. The next generation, he thought, would they turn out like this too? Would his own Ciaran have, or would he have had the nerve to push Ciaran into a plane for a new life somewhere else? Twenty-eight last May. He had talked once of going to Germany.

  He had to move.

  “I’m away then,” he said.

  Roe nodded slowly as though he had been considering something. Grogan wanted to tell him that he wasn’t one bit fooled by the slow talk and the way he looked at you. A person couldn’t hide that dislike. Contempt, more like it.

  He got the heel of his hand onto the stick and readied to push off. He felt Roe’s eyes on him as he levered himself up and got his balance. He looked up.

  “Was there something?”

  “Ah no,” said Roe. Grogan almost told him it’d be no bother for him to wipe that expression off his face for him, permanently. He stared at him for a few moments.

  “We’re grand now,” Roe murmured.

  A Cushy Number, Is It?

  There were three messages on the machine for Minogue. A dud, then one from his daughter asking if there was a handcart or a trolley or something she could borrow. She sounded a bit frazzled. He debated getting another money order. He didn’t want her crying on him, and he didn’t want her to think she had to tell him everything either.

  The third was from Sergeant Brendan O’Leary. Minogue liked O’Leary, Commissioner Tynan’s factotum, aide-de-camp, and quietly stubborn minder. O’Leary wasn’t in the business of phoning you to speculate about the price of a pint nowadays.

  Minogue wiped the messages and made strong, filtered coffee to mix with the milk he zapped in the microwave. He thought about O’Leary’s passion for golf, the course he had built in a desert when he had done a stint with the UN out in Africa. Kids had flocked to him, he’d heard. He’d heard only lately that O’Leary was rumoured to have knocked a tribesman, a chief of some kind, flat when there was some argument about a bride who was fourteen.

  Minogue had rewritten his List. He took it out and he read it while he waited for the kettle to finish. ‘Go’ was staying at the top of the list, then. Number 5, Herlighy, the only shrink a Guard would go to: maybe it’s exactly Herlighy he should be asking about Jennifer Halloran. And her mother. And her brother. He felt that falling in his chest again, and remembered that he had to stay busy. There was three-quarters of a bottle of Jamesons in the cupboard too, of course.

  He stared out at the pile of rocks that he had started gathering closer to the back of the coalhouse. There had been a dozen slug trails on the drive this morning. Something was at the peas again this year. Did any of this matter anymore. His eyes lost their focus along with his straying thoughts.

  Trains. It was seldom enough he took the DART, but the platform was always a place that made him a bit jittery even. It was something about the imminence of the trains that felt threatening, as if he could feel them long before he heard the ticks from the rails that told him one was coming around the curve and over the bridge from the Amiens Street station. What a god-awful sound it must have made, when she—

  He pushed off from the counter.

  And he had probably misread Fiona Hegarty too, hadn’t he. PSTD. RIP. PMS. A
WOL.

  He swore once, quietly, and remembered: that he hadn’t slept well; that that made a big difference; that he always had options; that Iseult and her husband would work it out like any other couple did; that lots of couples didn’t work things out; that he wouldn’t last long back down a bóithrín in Clare after all these years in Dublin.

  “Clearly,” he murmured. What every stupid iijit who got a microphone shoved under his nose, or a camera shoved in his face, said these days: clearly.

  Nothing worked anymore. Clearly.

  He turned back to the warming kettle when the phone began to ring. He’d let the answering machine tackle it. He concentrated on trying to figure what the reflections on the side of the kettle were.

  He chickened out after three rings.

  It wasn’t Kathleen or Iseult or the Lotto to say he had become a millionaire.

  “The Commissioner’ll take your call now, Matt,” O’Leary said.

  “I don’t have a call in to him.”

  “Really? He doesn’t mind you being a bit late with the call back.”

  Then Tynan’s swivel chair was squeaking in the background.

  “I was in touch with Moriarty,” Tynan said. “He knows I’m talking to you now.”

  Minogue pushed his fingertips harder onto the windowsill, watched the nails whiten.

  “Are you there?”

  “I am.”

  “You should know that Garda Hegarty made a statement exonerating you.”

  For what, Minogue almost asked.

  She says she realizes she should have given a bit more weight to things. Her mental state.

  “Whose mental state?”

  “The suspect’s. She’s very upset. She’s going on a week’s leave.”

  “A week’s leave, is she.”

  Tynan waited. Minogue began to think about Jennifer Halloran’s brother, would he understand. Probably not, except that Jennifer wasn’t going to be there anymore.

  “There’ll be the inquest,” Tynan said.