Islandbridge

by Brady, John

  George looked down at the bills.

  “No,” he said.

  But Malone had chosen a spot between George and the entrance. He put on his sleepy-eyed leer again.

  “Ah George, come on. We’re burning up here, man.”

  George smiled briefly then and let his head go slowly from one side to the other. Was he Italian, Minogue wondered. Greek? George used the mobile to point to the toilets and wrinkled his nose. Malone turned with George to head for the toilets.

  “Swedish,” Minogue said. “You hear?”

  A server he hadn’t seen before, a youth with some powdery stuff over his acne, came over with his tray held over his chest.

  “About time,” said Minogue.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said and swallowed, his Adam’s apple flying up and down. “But the management . . .”

  “Arra go on now. Don’t mind the management.”

  “The management says I’m not to serve you, sir, I’m sorry.”

  Minogue looked around the table. George’s pint was nearly gone, Malone’s too.

  “You are out of your mind there.”

  The lounge boy picked at the back of his neck and looked back to the bar.

  “I’ll be back from the jacks in a minute,” said Minogue. “There better be a change of heart here, young fella.”

  The lounge boy took a step back.

  “I’m sorry sir, it’s the management.”

  Something in the kid’s face, the line of worry between the eyebrows maybe, awakened something in Minogue.

  “Is this the only toilet for the whole pub here?”

  “Yes,” said the lounge boy, clearing his throat. “But it’s big. There’s different doors.”

  Minogue brushed by him; smelled the overdone cologne; felt sorry for the poor repairs the boy had tried on the raw acne he couldn’t help picking; cursed himself for not acting on what his gut had been telling him.

  He hammered open the door, barely breaking his stride, and made a run at the man who was standing over Malone. The man yelled something and jumped back. It wasn’t George. Malone’s legs were drawn up and moving slowly, and he was clutching his head. There were lines of blood coming through the fingers of both hands.

  “I just got here,” he heard the man say, “I didn’t do anything, I swear to God!”

  Minogue’s kneecap ground into the grouting as he knelt. Through his fingers he saw Malone’s eyes and the lines cut into his forehead from pain.

  “He had something in his hand,” Malone wheezed. “I didn’t see it coming.”

  “Is it just your head?”

  “He gave me a dig in the ribs too, a kick.”

  He took down one hand.

  “Don’t call an ambulance,” he said. “Don’t, it’s okay.”

  Minogue stared at the raw, torn flesh on Malone’s cheekbone.

  “You’re hurt,” was all he could say.

  “No. I’m okay, I mean I’m going to be okay. There’s nothing broke, I’d know. Really. Believe me.”

  Minogue looked up at the man who was now by the door.

  “Who was here when you came in?”

  “Just this man here, on the floor. Your friend? I swear? A fella left as I was almost coming in – in a bit of a hurry.”

  “What about him? A big fella, was it?”

  The man hesitated.

  “I’m a Guard,” said Minogue. “Tell me about this fella. Was he big, black hair?”

  The man nodded.

  “Chain around his neck, rings . . . ?”

  He began to shake his head. Minogue got up.

  “Go get some clean paper towels for this man. Don’t be gawking – get going.”

  “Don’t budge, Tommy. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Behind him he heard the sharp crack of the door hitting the wall, and the night air flowed around his chest. There were couples coming in from the car park, sounds of idling transports in the distance. He ran to a man closing a car door.

  “A big fella, chain around his neck, black hair, did you see him?”

  He stood amidst the cars, listened for running footsteps, a car starting up. To his dismay, he caught sight of more cars parked beyond a corner of the Roadhouse. He slowed and tried to see through the gauzy beam of light flung down by the quartz lamps clustered overhead.

  A glint from a car door closing caught his eye and he began to run toward it. There was more noise around here, a rumbling hiss from the traffic out on the main road. He kept his eye on the car but it reversed out, rocking as the brakes were applied at the end of a short arc.

  The car’s lights stayed off. He heard a wirp from the tires as the car shot forward and the lights ran along the side panels. He listened for clues, the burr of a six-cylinder engine, a diesel clanking maybe, an exhaust note. A Passat he thought, dark, or maybe a Primera – no, the new Mondeo. He gave up on names: he hadn’t a hope in hell of seeing this.

  He slowed, stared at the roof of the car, itself almost floating over the roofs of the parked cars before it hit an open spot. A manual gearbox anyway, he heard, and he watched the brake light glow and the bonnet drip when the driver pulled it through the curve that led out onto the N7.

  “You’re a bastard,” he said, panting, as the worry of his thumping you’re-too-old-for-this-caper heart took over.

  “But I’ll have you for this, George, or whoever the hell you are. I’ll have you.”

  2 A ship arrived from Valparaiso, Dropped its anchor in the bay, Her name reminded me of kingdoms, Sunlit countries far away.

  Chapter 10

  SLEEP, EVEN WHEN it finally arrived last night, long after the one o’clock when Minogue had sneaked into bed, had been a wild caravanserai – a marathon entirely. He saw their neighbour, the Costigans’ eldest, a harmless lad really, who never got a niche in adult life, hanging himself in the garage two years ago. There was that day in Virginia with Daithi and Cathy, a day as hot as the hob of hell, staggering through that Jamestown Settlement place, at once interested and vaguely repelled too. Several times his dreams took him to the sea, by Killiney he thought, but then suddenly right across the country to Lahinch with huge rollers almost sweeping away an adult Iseult, who then became a baby somehow, and later a seal too.

  Then it was Kathleen, and mad sex, until he was suddenly abandoned, and he was alone somewhere in an empty spot full of roaring wind and frightening clouds. There were narrow empty laneways in Paris somewhere, and a body shifting with feasting maggots and Malone cursing somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see him.

  It was barely light when Minogue willed himself awake, or so he thought. He lay there as unmoving as he could, staring at the glowing imminence on the curtains. It felt like he had barely slept. The whiskey he had drunk later on, as he pressed one on Malone too, hadn’t helped.

  He thought back again to the end of their adventure last night. He had interviewed, or tried to interview, some staff, but beyond a weak acknowledgment from one barman who thought he might have seen this George a few days back. He remembered Malone slowly sipping whiskey, and glowering around the pub and returning the uneasy looks from anyone who dared to meet his eyes or even look at the stains on his shirt and jacket, for even a moment.

  It had been half past eleven or so when they had finally left the Roadhouse place. As Malone had dropped him off by his car, Minogue had tried one more time to persuade him to go for an X-ray. No go: it was nothing more than a scrappy fight, Malone assured him, where a boxing opponent had landed a few good ones.

  A flood of morning light hit him from the open door of Iseult’s room. The garden had been rinsed by the light, and there was a soft glow over the grass. He plugged in the kettle, and took down the filters. It would be a long day.

  Malone phoned him at half nine.

  “So there,” said Malone. “Just to keep you in the picture. I’m going to look through the database at Joe Sinnott’s, an aliens list they keep there. It’s something, anyway. Joe’ll do it handy enough.”
/>
  “Any more give out of your man, Paddy Bang Bang?” Minogue asked.

  “You mean Paddy ‘I-never-met-the-man,’ Paddy ‘I-don’t-know-nuttin’?”

  “You have no way to improve his memory?”

  “Don’t talk to me about that iijit,” said Malone. “Yeah, I phoned him first thing. I put the heavy word on him too. But in the end, you know, I have to believe him.”

  Minogue waited.

  “It was a tip from a mate of his, that’s all,” Malone went on. “I got the mate’s name out of him finally, and I even got a hold of the mate late last night. Nothing. He heard it ‘from another fella.’ The usual. Everyone has Alzheimers, apparently. They want to stay well clear of anything.”

  “Did you try the local Guards yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Malone. “No hurry. But it’s a weird place out there, I’m telling you, isn’t it? Tons of money sloshing around, you know, farms going for millions, all that. The horsey set are all over the place too, and a lot of passing trade. Strange.”

  “I suppose,” said Minogue and yawned. “But if you’re asking me, my advice is still the same: hand on what you have now. Now more than ever.”

  “Listen, I’m not hiding under the bed after this. No way. I’m going to find that girl, you know. I am. And I don’t care who likes it or . . . Wait a minute, there’s somebody wants to talk to me here.”

  Minogue didn’t want to think of the girl, or what could’ve have happened to her. He heard Malone’s fingers move over the speaker, and voices behind.

  Tadhg Sullivan was on his way over. He stopped at the entrance to Minogue’s cubicle. His eyes bulged, and he flicked his head in the direction of the passageway. Minogue showed him the phone. Sullivan nodded, but pointed his finger at Minogue, and then back toward the passageway, and he nodded portentously.

  “I have to go myself,” Minogue said into the phone, not sure that Malone was yet listening. He hung up.

  “You have someone waiting on you outside by the front desk,” said Sullivan.

  Minogue studied Sullivan’s expression for several moments. Then Sullivan looked to the ceiling, and jabbed his finger skywards. “Who?”

  “I’m not certain,” Sullivan whispered. “But I think it’s one of Blake’s crowd.”

  Blake, Minogue thought: Blake?

  “Internal Affairs,” said Sullivan, and his eyes grew big again. “I think.”

  Minogue was ushered out of the lift by the detective who had called to the section.

  “Straight down here.”

  They filed down a hallway and came to a small, open area. A woman sitting in front of a monitor there glanced at Minogue, and called out “Paul?” and went back to something on the screen.

  A fortyish detective with a moustache and a phone to his ear looked around the corner and met Minogue’s eye. He held up his first finger, and nodded, and disappeared again. There were no glass panels in the doors here, Minogue noticed. From down a short hallway came the muffled sound of a phone ringing. Someone had made tea nearby.

  The detective reappeared and made his way over.

  “Inspector Minogue?”

  Minogue nodded. There was no offering of a name in return.

  “Come on down here with me.”

  Minogue eyed the smattering of dandruff on the collar of Moustache Guard Paul ahead, and thinning hair atop.

  Garda Moustache tapped at a door, and opened it.

  The man inside was Superintendent Eamonn Blake, the head of section for Internal Affairs. He was on his mobile.

  Minogue scrambled to try to recall how or why Blake had gotten his nickname of Earthquake Blake. He vaguely remembered that it had something to do with an article in the Irish Times, just after Blake had been given the job. It was when there had been a big fuss for years about the backlog of complaints against the Guards. Yes – he had it now: it was the phrase from the newspaper, something about a seismic shift in Garda accountability. Blake waved Minogue in. Moustache Guard pointed to a cloth-covered seat at the table, and closed the door again. He sat at a separate chair close to the door.

  Blake said “fine” and put down the phone, and scribbled something.

  Minogue refused to look over, but instead kept his eyes on the noticeboard where someone had pinned printouts of Web pages he couldn’t read from here.

  “How’re you, Matt?”

  “So-so,” he said. “But I have questions.”

  “I see,” Blake said. “Always a good sign. Give me your first one.”

  Minogue looked at the veneer on the table for a moment and then turned to Blake. He hoped Blake couldn’t hear his heart hammering away, like he could.

  “I went to bed last night an Inspector. Did I wake up a suspect in something?”

  “A suspect in what, now?”

  “I think that’s my line.”

  “I see,” said Blake again. “But you’re nervous, are you? Why is that, now?”

  “Well, why am I here?”

  “You’re here because of your involvement in something recently.”

  Blake began tugging at his watchstrap.

  “Recently? What happened?”

  “Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “Tell me,” Minogue said. “Am I the only one you’re talking to about this?”

  “Well, who should I be talking to then, Matt?”

  “Maybe you’re making this up as you go along. Are you?”

  “Ah, I see. A bit contrary, are we?”

  “Me? We could play the man from UNCLE some other time, I’m thinking.”

  Blake seemed almost indifferent to the remark. Minogue imagined a tape turning on a spool somewhere. But no, he thought, it’d be all digital now. He glared at the one-way glass covering the camera slot in the ceiling tile. Blake shifted in his seat.

  “I was down in New Quay over the summer,” Blake said, as though it were a question. “New Quay, County Clare. And I spent a fair bit of time in the hinterland.”

  Minogue studied how Blake was now turning his watch around and around on his wrist.

  “There’s a ton of McNamaras there,” added Blake. “Am I right?”

  “There’d be plenty, probably. Too many, maybe.”

  “Great Clare name, McNamara. My wife’s a McNamara. She tells me McMahon would be top of the list for names in Clare though.”

  “We disagree. But McNamara says it all. How you roll the R, is what counts”

  “I see. Kings of the Burren, they say. Or was it the Davorens?”

  “Neither. Look, why are we talking about this?”

  Blake paused in his detailed calibration of where his watchstrap might settle. Then he went back to turning it again, with minute tugs.

  “Just waiting for someone,” he said. “A person wants to join us.”

  “Someone,” said Minogue. “Now who would that someone be?”

  Blake looked up.

  “The Commissioner,” he said, brightly. “He’s running a bit late.”

  The door opened. The woman Minogue had seen earlier had a manila envelope, and a lidded, but steaming, Styrofoam cup.

  “Thanks,” said Blake and read something on the back of the envelope. He pushed back his chair and got up.

  “Have a look at these while you’re waiting, why don’t you,” he said.

  He tilted the envelope and spilled out the 8 by 10s. Their fresh emulsion scent came to Minogue almost immediately.

  The red was almost ruby, and it led in jagged streaks up to the body. There was a moist glistening from the flash in the dark blood matted on the hair.

  “What’s this,” Minogue said. “Give these to one of those new Site manager fellas, over at the Technical Bureau. I’m a suit now, remember?”

  “There’s a French expression for this, I think,” Blake said. “What was done to him, I mean. Coup de grâce, is it?”

  Minogue stared at him.

  “But poor Lawless didn’t speak much French, I’ll wager,” Blake s
aid.

  Minogue looked back down at the photos. They had none front-on.

  Minogue’s mouth was dry when he went to speak now.

  “Prove what you just said.”

  Blake began to uncap the coffee, and he blew into the cup.

  “You mean you don’t remember what Lawless looked like the other day, when you saw him?”

  Minogue looked at the photos again. There was no way to be sure.

  “No trick-acting now, if you please,” said Blake. “Yes or no?”

  Minogue was aware of the detective with the moustache staring at him. Still he studied what he could, trying to ignore the lines of blood that had come down over the face.

  “I don’t know,” he said to Blake. “It could be. Is it?”

  There was a knock at the door. Blake nodded at the detective, and he stood slowly and opened the door. Minogue tried not to look surprised to spot Brendan O’Leary, sergeant and also the Garda Commisioner’s Sancho Panza, perched on the desk glancing in.

  O’Leary’s perpetually wary look did not change, nor did he so much as nod.

  Blake slid the photos into the envelope, and pushed back his chair.

  “Okay,” said Blake. “We can start.”

  Minogue kept his eyes on the bin by the wall. The tension he’d been holding in his shoulders had turned to an ache. He looked back when he heard the footsteps enter.

  Commissioner Tynan’s eyes were baggy. Minogue couldn’t decide if his hair had gone greyer or a haircut had made it look that way. Ruth, his wife, had been wearing a wig when Minogue and Kathleen had bumped into them on Dun Laoghaire Pier in June.

  “So you’ve seen the photos,” Tynan said.

  “I have,” said Minogue.

  “You had a chance to pass on proper advice to Malone, then.”

  Minogue hesitated. He wondered if Malone was here in a room on the same floor even now – or even Kilmartin.

  “Right,” said Minogue.

  “And you did, it’s fair to say?”

  Minogue looked at Blake for any clues, but saw none.

  “That doesn’t change what happened,” said Tynan. “Does it?”

  “If I had even a tiny suspicion,” Minogue started to say. Something in Tynan’s gaze made him stop. Blake made some hurried note.