by John Brady
Kelly was at the counter already; Gallagher had a table. Was it tea, Kelly wanted to know. Grogan said that it was, and he made his way around the oul wans and their shopping bags clustered around them. Someone—Gallagher, he guessed—had already tucked in the chairs to give him room to manoeuvre.
Gallagher knew better than to ask if he wanted a hand. But still he lifted a chair with one hand and placed it by the table ahead of him.
“How’s the man,” he said.
“Not so bad.”
Grogan wondered as he slid down into the chair if Gallagher was still proud of any chance to show how strong his arms were. A vanity no one could argue with, to be sure, though. He had watched Gallagher propel that wheelchair of his down the road like a bloody ladder, the biceps and the gloves, the chest huge on him leaning forward, hell-bent on doing all the Belfast marathon in a record time.
Never one for blather, Grogan remembered, even before the shooting that had done him in. Still Gallagher had told him a few years ago that the one thing that scared him now, the only thing, was if he couldn’t move when he had to, when they came for him. Not if but when, and the them being, Grogan guessed, the Red Hand or someone hired by the Brits to finally top him. It had cost them nearly half a million quid so far, Gallagher had also told him: grants for fixing the house, the dole and disability, chairs, mobility, job training. He’d heard that Gallagher had started carrying an automatic any time he left his house now. Nothing to lose now, apparently.
The teapot was one of those spill-it models. Kelly swore, but didn’t stop pouring. Grogan watched the young fella, the door holder, and his girl. Cappuccinos, the both of them. Maybe he worked in computers, maybe she did. For a moment he wondered if these were the people who bought all the weekend drugs, or cocaine.
Kelly had been eyeing them too. He flicked his eyes to Gallagher and back for Gallagher’s take on the couple. Gallagher shrugged. Kelly turned to Grogan.
“Sorry to take you away from the gardening now,” he said. “But we need to get ahead of this, this thing.”
“You better say what,” Grogan said. “And back it up.”
Kelly gave him a look and then he poured milk.
“It’s the fella he works with,” Gallagher said. “Tight with him, so he is. The name of Canning.”
“I know his name,” Grogan said. “He’s just window-dressing. Doesn’t get the goods at all.”
“Well, how would we ever be sure of that?” Kelly asked.
Grogan stirred his tea.
“We’re always back to Quinn,” Kelly went on. “Taking Quinn’s word for it. You standing in for him.”
“You know something,” Grogan said after a pause, “you never got over the fact that he’s not political, did you.”
“It’s not that,” Gallagher said.
“Well, actually it is,” Grogan said. “As much as it is that you don’t trust any of them down there.”
“It’s not Quinn we’re talking about,” Kelly said. “OK?”
Grogan shrugged and tasted the tea.
“The fella’s been talking,” Kelly went on. “He’s a rat surely. A big, yappy rat, with a big – ”
“-Who is?”
Kelly leaned in.
“This Canning. How well do you actually know him?”
“I saw him the once, met him down at that place in Kells that time.”
“And what did you think of him then?”
“I didn’t think much. But he was only in for show, so I didn’t give him much time.”
“He goes back a way with Quinn.”
“If Quinn brought him on board, that was his call. I don’t question him on that.”
“That was then,” Kelly said. “But when Canning saw some of the money coming through, where this was going . . .?”
Grogan put down his cup. Gallagher was looking from face to face in the restaurant. Grogan watched the couple leave the restaurant with their coffee in those take-out cups. Right, he thought, they drink it while they’re walking around these days.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”
“Canning gets paid by the Guards there,” said Kelly. “They think Quinn has something going, but they can’t see it. So they got his mate. And from what I hear, this mate wasn’t very hard to get on the payroll.”
Grogan tried to remember what Canning looked like. He couldn’t get beyond short, strong-looking; a lout, though. He watched Gallagher flex his fingers in his gloves.
“You know we have someone in their place there, what do you call it—”
“—CDU,” said Gallagher.
“That’s it, but our source says that this Canning is putting his leg over the wall with them.”
“How much?”
“Not a big thing, but I hear he slips the odd word out, the odd time. The man is definitely touting, Liam.”
“How long?” Grogan asked.
“Only found out yesterday. Says it can’t be that long, on account he’d have heard before, or at least a hint.”
Grogan waited for Gallagher to look up from flexing his fingers.
“The way it looks,” Kelly said, “is that Canning was always in with them, some bit. From before.”
Gallagher’s eyebrows went up, and then he pretended to be interested in the creamy thing Kelly had brought over with the tea. Grogan looked away to the oul wans. They were gathering themselves to go. He wondered if their husbands were off together in a pub, or a bookie’s maybe. Women lived longer because they were better connected, didn’t they.
“Well we have it so that we all decide,” Grogan said. “That hasn’t changed, right?”
“Course we do,” said Kelly. “This doesn’t affect anything about that. Not a thing.”
Grogan knew that it was probably peculiar that he felt nothing now that he had decided. A nod of his head would do it, and he didn’t have to get involved after this meeting. Meeting, he thought; this cup of tea, Earl Grey, and a gawk at some cream buns or something that only Kelly would end up eating. Yes, meetings. He’d dealt with all kinds of life at meetings. Prison guards who thought they could squeeze them for more all the while pretending they were onside. Dutchmen and Libyans and Yanks who considered Ireland to be a backward hole, the most of them, where they could turn money into more money or use it for leverage or points or pressure elsewhere. The so-called intellectuals who wanted to rub shoulders with them, meet what they called “active service” people, to get their jollies from the smell of cordite and the solidarity forever crap. That was over half his life, those meetings.
“I’ll talk to Quinn then.”
“No, Liam,” Kelly said. “No dice.”
Grogan looked to Gallagher. The eyebrows did the talking again.
“Has to go, Liam,” Kelly said. “And if Quinn knows ahead of time, it’ll go bad.”
“This is too quick,” Grogan said. “There’s too much happening there, after the operation the other day. He needs time to evaluate.”
“It can’t wait,” Gallagher said. “It can’t.”
Grogan moved his cup and saucer to a new spot. He licked his fingertip and pressed it to the spilled granules of sugar.
“We wouldn’t expect him to take care of it himself,” Kelly said. “No way.”
“Very decent of you.”
“Nothing’s easy, Liam. But we need to keep our eye on the ball.”
“Let me ask you something,” Grogan said. “The both of you. You believe me when I tell you that he said nothing to Canning about the business, the Albanians?”
Kelly nodded. Gallagher looked toward the windows again.
“I spent nearly three years with him,” Grogan said. “I know what sort of a man he is. What he would or wouldn’t do.”
“Okay,” Kelly said.
“If he gave me his word that it’s only him knows about the job with those two, that’s good enough for me.”
Gallagher pulled at the fingers of his gloves. Grogan’s eye lingered on them. Like a ra
cing driver, he thought. Gallagher went through them pretty quickly, he’d heard.
“Which two,” Gallagher said. “There were four altogether, am I right?”
“I can count,” Grogan said. “I meant the first two.”
Kelly met his eyes, and Grogan understood that it was more than just Canning now. He looked at Gallagher. Gallagher pulled at his wheels every now and then, and let the chair rock back. Kelly lit a cigarette. Would it be Roe again, Grogan wondered. The expert.
The Bohemian Ambassador
Minogue walked around still puddles by the side of the school. He imagined what Kathleen’s reaction would be. How’d it go for you today? A trying day. I was interviewing crying schoolgirls half the day.
The Citroën was down on its haunches completely now, of course. He sat in and settled his notebook on the steering wheel. He had marked and numbered the corroborations with his red Biro. There were no expressions that jumped out to say they had rehearsed what they’d tell the Guards. The times matched, their recollections of what they said to one another. All the girls were upset they hadn’t seen Niamh leaving. Fair enough.
He stared at the wreck he wouldn’t sell, his conglomeration of French mechanical flair. Maybe it did look like a water buffalo or a shot rhino, like Kilmartin said. The weather-stripping by the back window could hardly be glued again. Rotating the tires wouldn’t make the one he studied any less bald. A company car, in private security?
He looked back up at the school. “And what did you learn at school today,” he murmured.
(A) That these girls’ parents wanted to put as much distance between their kids, their lives, their futures, and a dead Niamh Kenny. One parent, the Fanning girl’s mother, had done a lousy job of masking the fact that they wished this was forgotten about. Imagine: she’d had to actually allow her daughter to be interviewed by the Guards over this.
(B) That headmistress, Mrs. Tovey, turned out to be game ball. He took no satisfaction in telling her after the last interview that there were probably a half-dozen girls who’d taken Ecstasy or the like from that group. He remembered watching her frown, the distracted look, then the resolution in her voice. “We need to know these things,” she’d said. “We can’t be quiet about this.”
(C) That he was losing the battle to keep words out of his head: “Unfortunate.” “Accidental.” “Misadventure,” even.
The rubber seal around the edge of the sunroof was pinched again. He pushed at the offending part, itself frayed from the same treatment over the years. He stopped.
The man eyeing him was half into a battered Lancia, one of the old ones. A salt-and-pepper beard not far gone beyond heavy stubble, and sunglasses; a ponytail. A whitish linen style of jacket over a cobalt blue shirt telegraphed artsy to Minogue. The ambassador from Bohemia.
He nodded at him.
The man seemed to decide something. He uncurled himself from the car seat and headed over. Minogue took in the slow rangy walk of him. The insouciant ambassador, he guessed. He turned on the ignition, the electric window grunted and squeaked by the rubber seals.
“You’re a Guard, right.”
“I’m the Archbishop of Dublin,” Minogue said.
“Undercover?”
“And you’re?”
“Marc Chagall, Your Worship.”
Minogue gave him the once-over and he fetched up his icy smile.
“Ah sure, Marc, I wouldn’t recognize you. How have you been, since they buried you.”
“That’s the idea.”
“I’m so used to seeing you fly by, overhead.”
“Are you, now. Well for a culchie, you know a bit.”
“For a broken-down hippie, you still have some interesting prejudices.”
“East or west Clare?”
“You tell me. Mr. Shag-All.”
“I’d go with the West. Rocky. Contrary.”
“Okay then. I’ll give you five points for that.”
“You should give me a damn sight more than that. I spend three months a year in Fanore.”
“I didn’t think they had cappuccino there.”
“There’s a time of day, up a road there when the stones move.”
“You should steer clear of the local poteen. A fella was blinded not so long ago.”
“I don’t mean move, I mean move. It’s the light.”
“It’s probably German tourists rooting about there somewhere. They’re heavy.”
“I figure there’s a few more years in the place before Starbucks.”
“Not so long,” Minogue said. “It’s been gone that way this past long while.”
“You don’t go anymore?”
“I do. I was born and reared above the Pass.”
“I might have seen you then over the times? Greene’s?”
“I might risk a pint late in O’Lochlin’s. For old-time’s sake.”
“The father is still in it.”
Minogue nodded. The quiet, the taciturnity he liked almost as much as sitting at the counter in the quiet.
“Well, I never saw you there.”
“How well you wouldn’t. I like to be out of the way during the daytime.”
Ponytail Bohemian ambassador looked across at the playing fields.
“I’m Tom Anderson,” he said to the grass, it seemed to Minogue. “I teach art here.”
“I’m Garda Minogue.”
“Niamh Kenny?”
Minogue stared at him.
“Have you a minute? Come over to the car and I’ll show you something.”
Business as Usual
Bobby Quinn drew on his cigarette again. Grogan had said five minutes. He had switched phones, and walked out to the car for the call. He looked at his watch again. Ten minutes had gone by.
He looked out the passenger window at Canning helping the driver load the boxes for the pound shop run. Everything from fecking replacement stoppers for your sink to bars of chocolate that had stuff like cherry peanut crap in them that no one wanted to buy. To think that he had enjoyed doing the runs himself when he first got started. But there had been the few pints on the way back to Dublin, a laugh at the culchies. There had been the brassers doing their trade next door to the place in the Newbridge too. Ages ago, it seemed.
He drew hard on his cigarette, counted what was left in the box. Yes, smoking like a frigging chimney. He couldn’t get much more jumpy than he was. A half an hour ago, had jumped at the sound of tape ripping on the boxes. It had taken a few minutes for him to realize that it was from Roe taping plastic yesterday.
Canning had stopped helping with the boxes. He stood smoking by the back of the lorry, eyeing him. He didn’t want to lose it, to snap at Canning, but it had come close. Earlier on he’d been whingeing how opening all the boxes was stupid, that they’d have to repackage them again. To Catherine: well are you going to be home for tea or not? He should get sleeping pills or something. The phone rang.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you right now,” Grogan said.
Quinn felt his chest go tight.
“You better tell me what you mean.”
“Well, I can only go so far with that.”
The quiet way Grogan was speaking brought him out of the dull tension he’d felt growing, smothering him.
“I met with some people,” Grogan said. “You know them. It wasn’t what you might say a routine meeting.”
Quinn concentrated on the smoke coming from the tip of his cigarette. Grogan had always had that way with words, making one ordinary word sound important. Some way he had of seeming to slow things down a bit so’s you knew you understood what he was saying.
“There was a decision taken,” he said. “It concerns you, but not directly.”
“Tell me, then.”
“It’s awkward. The decision is in the nature of a general thing. I don’t know exactly what’s going to be done.”
He was waiting for him, Quinn realized.
“They don’t know I’m contacting you.”
Something began to move together for Quinn now. He turned in his seat to take in all around him.
“You have to tell me something,” he said to Grogan. “Some clue, you know.”
“You’re at your place, are you?”
“Well, I’m at work. Packing lorries. Look, what is it?”
Grogan didn’t reply immediately.
“There’s a leak,” he said then. “And it’s not here. That’s all I’m telling you.”
Quinn felt it as a pulse that reached down to the pads on his fingertips. The quiet on the phone, the resigned way that Grogan spoke, drove it home worse.
“It’s three now,” Grogan said. “You remember that place we did the meetings, back there at the start? You know the place.”
“Today, you mean?”
“Today. And you’re coming on your own.”
Quinn looked out at Canning. Now he had the driver standing around smoking too.
“It’ll just be me,” Grogan said. “I’ll be there from six on. If I get any flak at the border, I’ll give you two rings and hang up.”
“Liam,” Quinn said. “I don’t know about this.”
“Like I said, Bobby, I shouldn’t even be phoning.”
Quinn kept his cigarette to the very end, until the filter began to scorch. Canning sauntering over broke the spell.
“What are you so happy about,” Canning said.
The lorry driver glanced over and grinned. Quinn did a quick count of the boxes still on the ground.
“Is that stuff ready to go,” he said.
“Near enough,” said Canning. “Are we in a huge rush or something?”
Quinn looked up into Canning’s face, but he said nothing.
“Okay, okay, Bobby. I hear and obey. Business as usual.”
He watched Canning’s jaunty walk back to the lorry. He didn’t hear whatever comment he made to the driver, who grinned and threw his head back before flicking his cigarette away. He switched off the phone and checked the battery. He’d be needing it tonight.
