by John Brady
“Does he know the cash though, overall?”
“He might. He’s not thick. He sees it coming in, more of it now.”
Grogan sat back, seemed to gather himself. Quinn began to think of Catherine again, the mood she’d be in when he got home. She’d never get over that time she found out about the sessions down the Blessington Road those times with those women.
“Look,” he said to Grogan. “Didn’t we go through all this, but, like a dozen times?”
“We did.”
“You always knew that Beansie’s no more of a politician than I am. Which is to say, zero. He just does a job. It’s good to have him there in the window, that’s my attitude. Isn’t that good enough anymore? I mean, what do you want me to do? What do they want?”
“They?”
“Come on. You know. ‘It’s about trust,’ you said. Didn’t you?”
The waitress slid the plate of scones onto the near side of the table. They were to give her a shout if they wanted more jam. Quinn looked into the pot to see if the tea was ready.
“That’s right,” he said. “We all have our limitations. I mean, we’re talking about two very different places still.”
Quinn looked up from the pot.
“Well, I don’t know when they’re going to get it. Do you? I mean what does it take? I’ve done everything according to cocker here, you know. Everything. Don’t they get that yet?”
“It’s ‘we,’ Bobby. Give over with the ‘they want this’ and the ‘they don’t know.’”
Quinn pushed the tea bag against the side of the pot with the back of his spoon.
“Look,” he said. “Did I drive all the way here, get in shite with the missus, get stuck in the rain and a traffic jam, just to get a speech? It must be slow times you’re having up there if that’s all that’s on the agenda.”
Grogan looked across at the old photographs of the town, the dried flowers, the local artists’ drawings next to the windows.
“This isn’t like you,” he said. “You need to calm down. Get your wits about you. Now, more than ever.”
“You better spell it out, Liam.”
“I asked you where this man was tonight, Canning. And I didn’t hear your answer, did I?”
Quinn put down the spoon. Something had changed here but he didn’t know what. Grogan was staring at the tea bag now.
“You don’t know, do you.”
“No. Should I?”
“I think you should.”
He edged forward.
“’Cause the word today is, your mate’s a tout, Robert.”
Quinn kept his eyes on the waitress wiping the table, lifting the cup and saucer.
“Youse are all paranoid up there,” he whispered. “Bleeding paranoid, the lot of you.”
“Maybe so, maybe so. But that’s how it goes there. And you can’t change that.”
“You can take it from me—”
“—Listen to me.”
Quinn looked down at the knuckles, Grogan’s grip on his forearm.
“I don’t think you’re listening,” Grogan whispered. He let go slowly.
“Have you forgotten everything, how we talked, how we said it would be?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t matter there.”
“I’ve done everything they wanted, I’m doing my bit. The proof is there for Christ’s sake, the job . . .”
Quinn stopped then.
“It’s that bleeding psycho trying to cause trouble. Isn’t it? What’s his name, the one they sent? Roe. He’s an out and out nutter, I don’t care what you say. It’s him, isn’t it?”
“I can’t do everything, Robert.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you gone like them, is that it?”
“It’s us, I told you, not them.”
“No way. It’ll always be them and me. Them and other people. Them and the rest of the world. They’ll never get over it—what, should I have been pretending to be the real politico there for them, a Provo or something, so’s they might begin to excuse the fact I’m a Dublin man, that I wasn’t born and beat up and thrown in jail like they were, for oul Ireland? No way. They wanted a man knows his way around, had connections. Someone who could look after things down here. And that’s what they got. Now they’re still asking questions? They’re nuts, that’s what they are.”
Quinn didn’t want any of the scones. Still he plastered them with jam and went at them fiercely. He eyed Grogan occasionally while he ate, watched the fingers close on one another, the stupid things he did with his hands for exercise.
“So?” Quinn said finally and lifted the teapot again.
“It’s not going to be people conducting interviews or asking your opinion, you know,” Grogan said. “Or mine. Remember that.”
“Opinion about what?”
“About what to do.”
“I’ll tell you what they should do. They should get their facts straight, that’s what they should do. Let me talk to them.”
Grogan shook his head.
“If they heard you just now,” he said, “that’d be enough for them.”
“It’s not we anymore, I’m hearing. Look. I’m going to do a bit of checking up on my own, so I am. I’ll see if there’s anything about Beans that looks a bit off.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not? What they need is a wake up, a bit of reality. This paranoid attitude is going to end up wrecking things, that’s what.”
“Leave Canning. Keep away from him. You have to.”
The aftertaste of lukewarm tea soured at the back of Quinn’s throat.
“You can’t be saying that. You can’t.”
“You have to, Robert.”
“How can I do that? I can’t.”
Quinn waited for Grogan to say something else, to explain.
Grogan slid an English fiver under the plate. Quinn was slow himself to get up. He knew better than to offer Grogan a hand manoeuvering around the table. There was something about the way Grogan’s jaw had set, the way he wouldn’t look at him as he put on his coat.
“Is that it then? All the way here?”
Grogan glanced around the restaurant.
“Can’t you persuade them? Jesus. It’s just stupid what they’re saying.”
“Think about what I said,” Grogan murmured.
Quinn grabbed his arm. Grogan kept pushing the button through at the top of his coat.
“A break,” he murmured. “You need a holiday. Get out of Dublin for a few days. A week.”
Quinn watched him leave, followed the half sideways walk as Grogan headed out in the blustery street. The scones and jam on tip of the crisps he’d eaten on the way weren’t going to do his guts any good. The waitress hadn’t seen the money yet, and she was sizing him up for paying the bill. The annoyance had gone and Quinn didn’t want to think at all about what the slowly falling ache that seemed to start at his ribs might mean.
Refuge
Ten minutes before Tunney finally phoned, Minogue had already given up on him.
“The young lad, and the older one, they did fine,” Tunney said. “But the little fella kept bawling. I let it go. The parents were ready to rear up on me in anyhow.”
They wouldn’t be the only ones, Minogue might tell him when this case was put away.
“How was the older lad on his times that day?”
“Not great. He doesn’t have a watch.”
“Did he say what he thought when he saw her?”
“He said he thought she must be sleeping. Said that he felt creepy too, like he was being watched.”
“But he said nothing to his ma, or anyone at home?”
“Well,” said Tunney, “maybe you know more about what goes on in a kid’s head. It was only when the sidekick, the little fella, started getting the willies that it all came out. The little fella had dreams, and he was crying. It was his ma who put two and two together. That’s how it got going.”
Minogue listened to Tunney’s half-hearted walk
through his interview notes. There was nothing there really. He looked down at the notes Tunney had made of a session with Eileen Magee over a cup of tea in the Murphy woman’s house. Foxes weren’t completely nocturnal, were they.
Tunney said he wouldn’t be stopping off at the station. He had an appointment. Minogue almost asked him if Collins had the same kind of appointment.
Ten to five on the clock, a few minutes short of the symmetry which said to him that he need not feel too guilty about heading home. Marooned, he sat back and dithered. He fished out the Irish Times where he had reread the page and a half reporting on the murder of the Albanians. He looked again at the official line from the Garda press office: there is no evidence yet that the murders are related to their status as refugees in Ireland. Then the paragraph quoting a Special Branch statement that there was reason to doubt the identities were as stated in the asylum claim. A right frigging mess, he could hear Kilmartin declare. Gangsters popping up all over the kip like jack rats in a demo skip. Im-fecking-possible, the mess dumped on the Guards.
Then the drawing of a fox in the sidebar: “Reynard’s return? P. 8.”
Hardly. He half-remembered some pointers from an interview with a Dutch-sounding biologist: composting, stress, traffic patterns had driven foxes into urban patterns. Fast-food waste. Had he mentioned that? At least he hadn’t tried to say it was a message from the Little People.
Minogue thought then about having those two girls, and their parents, show up at the station for a second interview, and let things happen that way. See if they were so keen to jettison Niamh Kenny, to get on with their lives then. See if their memories improved, about drugs and parties and clubs and everything bloody else that their goms of parents wanted to believe wasn’t going on. How much had they kept from their parents, how much had the parents kept from him? Did they think he was an iijit entirely?
Yes, he thought: keep them waiting a while in the public office here below, under the posters and the notices and the wanted signs. That’d warm them up. And let the parents freak out as much as they’d want. Kilmartin’s Way, yes.
He missed Kilmartin, the way he could park people in the system, to let the place get to them. How often Kilmartin had sat back, too often lighting another cigarillo, easing himself occasionally with a light sigh Minogue could bet was a fart, while a narky interview candidate cooled his heels outside. Not quite ripe, Kilmartin would say, and settle back into his chair. Leave them hanging a while yet.
Whoever had drawn the fox for the newspaper knew how to make it so’s the eyes were always on yours, like looking into the camera.
It struck him only then how much he’d strayed. Maybe it was Tunney’s take on the Kennys that had coloured it for him from the start. Or was it how the O’Neills had looked at him during the interview with their daughter? The feeling that they were holding their noses, having to deal with policemen and ugly events. There was the slowly building anger he was still trying to ignore when he heard Tynan’s name cropping up everywhere. Kenny knew Tynan socially, said Kenny’s sister, a substantial pain in the arse, Minogue had concluded, like her brother. Then Mrs. Tovey as much as telling him straight out that Tynan had phoned her to let her know he’d sent Minogue. Minogue, some sort of gillie, an ambassador from Commissioner Tynan sent to calm the waters.
He thought how Kenny talked, like he was issuing directives half the time. The house, the money they must have. Who was the snob now?
He swore and slapped the desktop once and stood. He folded the paper, hurriedly, tried again to rein in his skittery mind. Then he closed the casebook, locked it in the cabinet and pocketed the key that Tunney had given him.
He had already decided and he hadn’t realized it: he was homing in on that half hour of the day, the long grasses and the light behind the hills where he’d hide, a bit of refuge—Kathleen or not.
He stopped by Niamh Kenny’s second to last work of art. The place where you go to even in your imagination, Anderson had assigned a secret place, if you like, where you feel best. Niamh liked to dance, the parents had told him. He found a phone book under the table on top of a stack of “Stay Safe” pamphlets for handing out to schools. The yellow pages had a section on nightclubs. There was no Wonderland club. Nor in dancing schools even.
How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?
Quinn’s back was at him now. He shifted a few times, once nearly falling off the rickety fold-up chairs they had at the Academy. It was nerves, of course it was, he knew, there was no getting around it.
He didn’t remember bits of the drive back down from Drogheda. But he hadn’t forgotten the weird bits, the games his mind had started playing on him. For a while, he’d actually felt something was in the car beside him. He was able to mostly fight off thinking about Doyle and what Roe had done, but the car wheels slapping the cracks on the shite piece of road near Balbriggan sounded for a minute like what he’d heard coming from the tool room at the garage yesterday.
He had only admitted later, when the city filled up around his car again, that he’d gone blank because it was a kind of panic. That helpless, what-have-I-done thing that had been part of growing up, with his father and the drink and the treatment he’d given his ma—like the accelerator was jammed and the steering wheel wasn’t working.
Catherine didn’t help much. Oh, she knew there was something wrong, fair play to her, and she knew not to ask him. But still, there was a coldness about her that was worse than just being plain pissed-off for being late for the recital.
“This one’s Jessica,” she whispered to him.
He looked up at the fat little one going at it with the tap shoes.
“Her best friend,” he whispered to Catherine.
“No,” she said quickly. “Tara’s her best friend.”
Without looking at him either, he saw. She didn’t expect him to know? He tried to stretch his back again. The chair leg scraped. Catherine darted a glance at him.
He had to get some sleep. His systems were slowing down on him and he had to get the message. He should get Beans tonight and sort this out, good and proper. Do what needed doing.
The music accompaniment started. Catherine sat forward, began to smile at last.
“How much is that doggie in the window . . .”
Yes, there was no doubt about it. He was going mad.
Give Bray a chance
Kathleen Minogue walked across the strip of grass to the promenade proper. She stood with her back to the railing, and studied the apartments beside where Minogue had parked. He stepped out warily, the smell of candy floss and decaying seaweed drifting, took in the salt air.
He had to admit it: they had done a lot here over the years. The lawns, the flowerbeds, the bandstand were in good order. The lights along the promenade were new. Nearly all the old hotels and B&Bs had serious facelifts or replacing entirely.
A steady stream of cars processed by him toward the lights of the arcades at the far end of the seafront glowing and flashing under the steep rise of Bray Head heaped in the twilight above. There was a lemon sky behind the buildings, a sliver of a new moon to the north. Dublin glowed behind Dalkey Hill there; civilization.
And to be fair, he had forgotten how beautiful the view could be here. It had been years since he had been down the seafront here. He had chosen only to remember the saucy English seaside postcards where all the men had those shiny, sausage noses and leers, the buxom women half-bursting out of their bathing suits, with fingers perpetually at their mouths feigning surprise. Greasy chips, dog shit, Honda 50s. Even the hordes of louts staging bottle fights might be long gone.
The sea was silver. Give Bray A Chance Day has come. He followed a darkening coast by Shankill up to Killiney. The sweep of the bay had never dulled for him.
“There’s a lot you didn’t notice here now, isn’t there,” Kathleen said.
He put his arm around her, saw how pleased she was at his defection.
“It’s a family town now, more than ever,” sh
e said. “And there’s the DART, look—you’re in town in a half-hour.”
She began to stroll toward the busy end, near the ice-cream shop.
“God,” she said, “remember Daithi here with the sandcastles? Fighting to keep them and crying all night?”
Hardy Canute, Minogue called him for a week afterward. He didn’t want to spoil things by reminding Kathleen of the spectacular vomiting and diarrhea both Daithi and Iseult had had after a long day here.
Smiling, Kathleen stopped and turned toward the apartment building.
“They certainly pay attention to detail,” she said.
It was expert, he had to agree. Landscaping, railings, big windows.
“Sort of a nautical theme, isn’t it,” she said. “What you might call maritime.”
Minogue looked along the façade, noted the Mercs and high-end Volvos. He thought about broken dry stone walls, heather under the bank, the strange pleasures he’d had lately listening for curlews.
Then he heard the clacking from the train station. The gloom from which he had escaped a few hours today, ran back at him. What were Jennifer Halloran’s family doing tonight, except having their hearts ripped out every second probably.
“You could revisit the process in five years,” she said. “And you’d do well out of it—I’m not saying we have to call this home.”
He didn’t know what revisit the process meant. It came from the same vague space that he knew dimly about and kept at bay, the kind of talk he heard on chat shows, the brash verbosity of the entitled: feeling comfortable, relationships, concerns. Issues.
He squeezed her shoulder without knowing it. She was right - there was nothing wrong with wanting things. And she shouldn’t have to put up with a man who didn’t seem to know what century he was in. I wouldn’t mind a visit on one of those times when you visit our planet again: her words. Not angry of course, but hurt a little. Expecting that they could agree a bit more after all these years.
She looked up at him. They stepped aside to let a family get dragged along by a spirited purebred collie.
“Look,” she said. “Dublin—eight miles away. The best of both worlds here.”
