by John Brady
Minogue remembered the curving tarmac path by the banks of the Dodder, the trees ahead, the murmur of the river near where they’d found the girl. What was it her da worked at again, that he couldn’t get his head around? Events management, that was it.
“Money laundering,” Kilmartin muttered. His eyes still followed the progress of the bed and its gently swaying drip as it continued slowly down the hall.
“Drug labs in industrial estates.”
He nudged Minogue.
“Hey. Is it true about that fella Roe, you know? Cutting Doyle up . . .?”
Minogue nodded. His thoughts had strayed back to Jennifer Halloran now. Moriarty from Fraud had phoned late last night, said Fiona Hegarty wanted to go to the funeral. And could he consider meeting with Fiona, as it might do her some good. She was losing it apparently. It had all fallen apart on her.
“You still say he hadn’t a clue?” Kilmartin asked.
“What, Jim?”
“About Doyle, that fella. That he’d palmed off the pills on that girl . . .?”
“Niamh. Niamh Kenny.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus, you’re playing your cards very close to your chest there, bucko.”
“I really don’t. I just know that Quinn started talking after he got the witness protection signed.”
“Huh. A bloody record that too—in thirty-six hours. He must have the goods.”
The trolley turned the corner where Kathleen was standing reading something on the wall. Kilmartin uncovered his watch.
“Ah come on,” he said. “What are they doing in there? You know what I’m thinking, don’t you. Chinese mammy or not in there with them.”
“Ah now. They’re not. You have to be married for that carry-on, Jim.”
“Very smucking fart aren’t you now. But look, back to Quinn: he should be able to clear that up in one second, the business about that unfortunate schoolgirl, the Kelly girl. Right?”
“Kenny,” said Minogue.
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“Niamh Kenny.”
He stared at Kilmartin.
“Yes? Well?”
“Sixteen, she was. Sixteen, Jim. Niamh Kenny.”
Kilmartin made to say something but held off.
The faces of the mother and father came back to Minogue. It was gone eleven o’clock when he’d gotten to the Kennys’ house. Met the Kenny boy, a huge man actually, a rugger boy no doubt, with an American twang already. They’d talked until one. The mother’s head had been almost vibrating—he still couldn’t get a better word to describe it. Her hands too, of course, and the eyes on her: sunk in, like a blind woman’s, unfocused. Sedated to hell and back, he’d figured. She mightn’t even know it’s the middle of the night. He had expected her to scream, jump up, do something, but she was like a stroke had hit her.
No let-up from the father until an hour or so into it. Minogue had waited him out. Colm Kenny had burst into tears in the middle of half-shouting, half-whispering something about predators, or jackals, or something Minogue couldn’t quite remember exactly. And Úna Fahy, the aunt, looking at him with an expression he didn’t want to believe was disdain. He had sat in the Citroën for half an hour at the bottom of the road then afterward—smoking, and taking more mouthfuls than he had expected from the bottle of Jamesons he had in the boot.
“Well?” said Kilmartin. “Are you still with us here? After that little performance?”
“He said he didn’t know.”
“Ah, my arse to that! He falls into witness protection inside of thirty-six hours and he doesn’t know that? Who are you trying to cod? Who is he trying to cod?”
Minogue shrugged. He remembered that a vein had stuck out in Colm Kenny’s neck when he’d told Kenny, again, that Quinn wasn’t connected to their daughter’s death. That Niamh had gotten the drugs from Doyle. That there was probably no way any parent could have predicted that such a fella like Doyle or his cronies down at that amusement place in Bray would have been able to get to sixteen-year-old kids.
“He says no, Jim. It’s head-the-ball at that arcade. Gannon, was the pal of Doyle’s. Gaga. He says that Doyle told him he had an in with the Albanians. That they were giving him freebies.”
“‘Samplers,’” said Kilmartin. “Christ, like the pharmaceutical crowd give the doctors. Honest to God . . .!”
He uncrossed his legs and plucked at a trouser crease over his knee to restore it.
“Tried to play everyone, didn’t he, Doyle. Smart arse—look where it got him. Well, wherever he is now, I mean. Bits of him all up and down the Belfast road maybe? I say the Northern crowd knew all along.”
Kilmartin leaned in again.
“Like they knew about Quinn’s sidekick all along, the fella out in the jacks there with the lead poisoning.”
Canning had been shot at least twice in the head, Minogue had learned.
“Now here’s the thing,” Kilmartin went on. “The shite hasn’t hit the fan yet, has it, I mean really hit the fan. You know what I’m saying.”
Minogue raised an eyebrow.
“The insider. Whoever’s with our mob that was throwing them bits.”
“Uh,” Minogue said.
“Quinn knows damn well who the insider is. That’s why he got protection in world-record time. They want him something fierce, oh yes. It’s his best card. He’ll hold out a long while I tell you. They can get anyone and he knows it—in prison, relatives, anywhere.”
Kilmartin was the fourth person who had told Minogue this in the past two days. Still, he wasn’t sure; he had stopped being surprised at how little he cared now.
“He wants everything, Matt, Quinn does,” said Kilmartin. “The papers, the witness relocation, a lorry load of money. And do you know what?”
“Go ahead.”
“He’ll get it. He will. The bastard.”
Minogue watched Kathleen take her time strolling back down the hall. He didn’t return her wink and smile. Kilmartin gave him another nudge.
“He knows how much it’s worth to tell us which of ours was on the take for them in Belfast. Our frigging Judas. Whoever fed Quinn’s butty—Canning, now I remember his name—to them.”
Minogue almost decided to tell Kilmartin then. That Beans Canning had passed nothing on to the Drugs Central detective who was supposed to be cultivating him. That he’d never taken money. That Central had begun to conclude that Canning was trying to string them along and to deflect them from Quinn too.
“Have you heard of disinformation?” he asked.
“Course I have. What the hell are you asking that for?”
“It means that we mightn’t ever know. Basically.”
Kilmartin sat back in his chair. He gave his friend the crooked smile he offered when it was clear that he was dealing with iijits.
“Well, listen to you,” he said. “Up is down, down is up. ‘We may never know, Jim.’”
“Well, we won’t.”
“Well, listen to me now. I’m going to tell you something that you won’t like one bit.”
Kilmartin seemed to reconsider.
“Ah, never mind,” he grunted. He looked at his watch. “Jaysus, I can’t be sitting here all the day.”
“Say it, Jim. Whatever it is.”
Kilmartin glanced over at Kathleen.
“Okay. I will then. What if a fella said that you don’t want to know about this fink we have somewhere in CDU. Or worse.”
“What’s worse. That I’m in the Nile?”
Kilmartin drew himself up.
“Well ha, bloody ha. No. ‘Worse’ is this: that you’re covering up for . . .?”
Minogue kept his eyes on Kilmartin’s. Kilmartin nodded toward the door to Malone’s room.
“He has a brother, doesn’t he . . .?”
Minogue said nothing.
“. . . that he, er, cares deeply about?”
Minogue looked around Kilmartin’s face. No, it wasn’t a
joke.
“Are you registering anything I’m saying there?”
Minogue blinked.
“I take that to be a maybe,” Kilmartin whispered. “Listen. Try and be objective for once. Our friend is in Drugs Central, isn’t he. He knows Quinn and Canning and the others too, I’ll bet. He knows, what do they call it, ‘The Life.’ Well?”
Minogue’s eyes had slipped out of focus. Nothing changed, really. Kilmartin had always had it in for Malone. Already he saw himself walking down the hall and out into the car park.
“Here’s a word to hold, Matt. To hold and keep. International. We’re not some frigging oul rainy afterthought on the edge of Europe anymore, are we. Welcome to the real world, pal. Oh yes.”
Minogue knew that he had to do something before the anger took him over. Twenty how many years had he known Jim Kilmartin, watched him finesse the bull-necked Mayo culchie act into an almost flawless decoy, seen him sink his teeth into cases and put away what must be scores, hundreds, of murderers.
Minogue narrowed his eyes. Kilmartin sat back.
“I don’t hear much out of you, do I? That tells me I’m not far off the mark.”
“They’d love to hear you talk like this,” Minogue said.
“Who would?”
“People who’d make something out of the Guards tearing away at one another.”
“Oh Christ, do you think I get any satisfaction out of thinking like this? I’m not saying he did or he didn’t, Matt. I’m just saying that these things happen. Keep your eye on the ball, etcetera.”
“They’d be—”
Sonia Chang had yanked open the door. She said something in what Minogue decided must be Chinese. Minogue stood and gave Mrs. Chang a nod.
“Fresh and well you’re looking today, Sonia,” he said.
“My mother,” she said.
“How’s it going with yourself, Mrs.”
Kilmartin was on his feet by now.
“A big dinner, he wants,” Sonia said. “At the restaurant, of course.”
“Well, look out when that gets going,” Kilmartin said. “We’d all pile in for that if we knew when and where. Wouldn’t we, Matt?”
Macau was the name of the place, Minogue remembered now. They had been held there for three years. Malone had told them it had been touch and go until the restaurant got going, that there’d been a lot of tension. Sonia’s mother wanted to go to Australia in the first place. She thought the Irish, or more particularly the Dublin people, were nice enough but disorganized, even with all the money here now. She’d given up on learning English recently. Sonia was not looking forward to a looming showdown between her ma and da, Malone had told him. Her da was pushing harder for Sonia to go into accountancy proper, and get out of payroll software or whatever thing Malone had told him she was doing when she wasn’t in the restaurant helping out.
“He’s stronger today,” she said. “Thomas.”
“I suppose,” Minogue said. “But I doubt his nose has straightened out.”
She smiled.
“You have to be born outside Dublin to be handsome. Maybe you didn’t know?”
“Hah,” she said in that breathy sigh he’d heard from her before.
“But Thomas said not to believe you if you say such things. You see?”
“Well put,” said Kilmartin.
Sonia waved at Kathleen. Minogue watched the six feet of Kilmartin curl a little more as he tried to get the mother’s attention away from some point on the floor down the hall. She wouldn’t look at him, but he kept shuffling and trying. He began speaking as though to a deaf child.
“I think we’re in for rain,” he said. “Mrs. Chang?”
She glanced up.
“Rain,” he said, and pointed at the ceiling. “Good for the garden, but. Cabbages?”
She nodded, and Minogue saw her eyes sweep over toward her daughter’s feet.
“Come on,” Kathleen said. “We don’t have long.”
Kilmartin took his cue, said a loud Good Luck now to Mrs. Chang along with a stiff bow, and pushed open the door. From Malone inside, he heard “Jaysus, they’ve sent in the bouncers to get me out of here.” Kilmartin’s “Well lookit the hard chaw himself. All wrapped up with his very own nappy, My Jaysus.”
Kathleen rolled her eyes. Minogue paused in the doorway, and put his hand in to get the baby Powers whiskey he had bought at the off-licence. Forgotten it. The head was going on him.
“Well, Kathleen,” he heard from Malone, the nasal drone of the Dub accent full-bore now. “They send in the good-looking one last, do they?”
Minogue looked through the closing door, saw Malone’s hairy leg stretched out over the sheet, the beginnings of the bandage above his knee. His mobile, yes, in that pocket. Wallet, keys. Notebook. No, no whiskey.
He was alone in the hall. Things had taken on that strange cast again, and he was slipping into thought. Dreamy, Kathleen would notice, no doubt.
He heard Kilmartin calling Malone Wyatt Bloody Earp, Kathleen’s short laugh. How everything seemed to go on, he thought; particularly, relentlessly. No wonder he was tired. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours straight in almost a week now.
He wondered if he could call off the meeting he’d agreed to, the one Fiona Hegarty asked for. Why outside Clarendon Street church? She wanted to thank him, she said. Was it some kind of a prank? Off her rocker?
The Kennys were waiting to hear back from him again. They didn’t understand why it took ten days to get results from the pills Gaga Gannon had handed in, the ones Doyle had gotten from the Albanians.
He thought about Jennifer Halloran’s brother. About why he wasn’t as angry now at Kilmartin’s sly digs about Malone. About Tynan, and his talk of expediting the program. An earlier start, was the phrase he’d used yesterday—get that German phrasebook working. Why, he’d asked Tynan twice, with his letter sealed in the envelope under his plate in the restaurant: haven’t I screwed up enough? And he knew that Tynan knew what was in the envelope, the way he wouldn’t let on or even look at it. Something he’d said in that tone that a lot of people would surely take as sarcasm about the art of moving from failure to failure with confidence.
His list, of course, changed daily these last few days. The goat and the donkey, and the two-room house looking out over the bay from the Burren heights, had moved down. A fool he was surely, a bigger one than he’d been a week ago, and the sleepless small hours of the morning told him that.
“What’s keeping you?”
It was Kathleen’s voice from the doorway behind him.
He turned.
“Little things,” he said, as always.
He’d phone Iseult the minute he got out of here; coax her and Éamonn up to the paths over Shankill, into the deeper woods where few people went.
Kilmartin pulled open the door.
“What the hell is keeping you? Come in and explain yourself—and translate what this fecking Dub is talking about. By God he must have been clocked in the head the way he talks, he hasn’t learned the . . .”
Kilmartin stopped, stared at Minogue.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. No. In actual fact I’m knackered.”
Kilmartin let the door close behind him.
“It wasn’t your fault you know, Matt. No way.”
The clumsiness annoyed Minogue. He said nothing.
“And Bray? A kip. I never liked it. Ever.”
“It’s improved.”
“That girl I meant too,” said Kilmartin. “The Fraud thing. That.”
Minogue had forgotten that Kilmartin still referred to anyone under ninety as a girl.
“And come here to me,” Kilmartin went on. “That other business, with Malone? That was only a theory. That’s all it was. Maybe I’m watching too many of those cop shows.”
His tie had come askew in the horseplay.
“What are you staring at?”
“That’s the worst tie they ever made.”
; Kilmartin was quicker than Minogue remembered. He had him in a headlock and halfway in the door before Minogue decided he wouldn’t even try to get free. He heard Kilmartin’s shoe on the door to Malone’s room.
“Look at what’s lurking around these parts beJaysus, sorry Kathleen, again—fecking autograph hounds, by God. I’ll fire him out the window, so I will.”
Minogue was released. He looked over to Malone. The sardonic gaze he expected wasn’t there, just a stare. He nodded slowly, once. Minogue could only nod in return.
Why Isn’t This About Niamh
Minogue didn’t remember the Special Criminal Court looking this much like, well, he wanted to say Sarajevo, since they’d been pulling in the gangs after the murder of the journalist. Was that five years ago already?
It had taken all of four minutes for Quinn’s appearance and remand. He watched the soldiers climb into the Toyota Land Cruisers he didn’t know the Army had until today, and head out. He’d given up trying to spot the ones on the roofs and the parapets and in the doorways all down the street. And now, even with the barricades down, the street was still strangely quiet and empty. He looked up at the overcast sky and stretched. The helicopter’s batting and droning was gone. The air was close here in the old part of the city, laden with smells and that weight of bygone times that Minogue sometimes believed was peculiar only to Dublin..
He nodded at two of the Serious Crimes detectives who had been called by the State. The judge would leave by car, no doubt, under escort.
He should phone Kathleen, he should fix the letter of resignation, he should stop thinking about cigarettes. He should also stay way to hell away from Úna Fahy, Niamh Kenny’s aunt.
Úna Fahy had turned out to be a solicitor all right, and Minogue remembered that it had taken a few troubles to get the right side of her that day at the Kennys’ house. Far too late now, he thought, and didn’t much care really. But he hadn’t been able to hide his surprise that she had left a message—not about her niece, or how Colm Kenny was going to sue every Guard in Ireland for letting a criminal walk the streets . . . but about Jennifer Halloran.
