Islandbridge

by Brady, John

  “Well, I’ll tell you. I’ll keep it as succinct as I can.”

  Chapter 16

  MINOGUE SAT IN beside Malone and pulled the car door clo

  There was little energy left in him. He looked down Pearse Street toward Ringsend, and he imagined going straight out beyond the chimneys there, out to Poolbeg. There he’d park at the beginning of the South Bull, and he’d start out along the pier of quarried stones that cut through the estuary waters and led out into the middle of Dublin Bay. He’d take his sweet time walking out to the lighthouse there, his only task to move his feet, and to let the rolling seawater, and the Wicklow Mountains across the bay to the south, put his head to rights.

  He heard Malone turn the pages of his notebook. He guessed Malone had been shaken too. A bus passed and let him see again the bridge over the canal quay in the distance, the gentle rise in the road that then led down to Ringsend and the bay.

  “Jesus,” Malone said. “I thought I’d heard everything.”

  Minogue said nothing. He still didn’t open his own notebook, but let his gaze rest on the street. His mind wasn’t going to just surrender this escape. It took him by the beaches at Shellybanks and up the side of the power station to the beginning of the Bull Wall. Bligh, that tyrant and navigation genius, had mapped Dublin Bay in preparation for this Wall, he’d read some time back. This was the self-same Bligh that had later locked up Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow Rebel, in Australia.

  “I thought that sort of thing only happened in, well, I don’t know where, in actual fact,” Malone murmured. “Eastern Europe maybe.”

  Minogue kept fighting to hold onto his piece of fallen Eden out over the water. Surrounded by water except for the line of the pier back, he could sit and study Howth and the Wicklow hills across the bay.

  “I wonder,” said Malone, and this broke the spell on Minogue. “I wonder if people know about this.”

  He was looking over at Minogue.

  “Or if they’re doing anything about it? Us Guards, I mean.”

  Minogue didn’t want to talk about it. It would lead him to absorb some of the pain and fear he imagined in those lives.

  “If that’s what this woman is caught up in . . .”

  Minogue opened his notebook. He looked over at Malone’s. Seven names, three of them actual Marinas; four that could be leads.

  “Even if she has nothing on Condon . . .”

  Again Malone’s words tapered off.

  “We’ll do our best to find her, Tommy. It’s about her for now, I’m thinking.”

  “If Condon really was with a girl like this, well, like . . . ?”

  Like this, Minogue heard repeated in his head. As if they were interchangeable, just as Sister Imelda had said. He looked at the names he had underlined, the four of the seven that had made contact with the Teach Chúram, but had not been heard from again.

  “I must be a complete iijit,” said Malone. “Not to have known this. Maybe I couldn’t imagine it in Ireland. Jaysus, I’m in the game long enough. I mean, I’ve been around. But this? How could somebody Irish do this? Make money out of this? I mean it’s one thing to be gouging people in their pay in some factory or meatpackers, but then to be in on this blackmail thing? I mean that’s – well you know what that is.”

  “Slavery, I’d have to say,” Minogue said. “Is there another word for it?”

  “Look, I’m going to phone Sinnott and see who takes this stuff on.”

  Minogue half listened while Malone talked with, and half argued with, Sinnott. He watched Malone scribble and tried to decipher the writing. Malone wrote some words carefully, and eyed Minogue after, tapping on the page with his Biro. Temple, Bar, Bistro Seven Oh. Sweeney Meat Packers, Clonmel. The Grange Hotel, a Hotel Aisling. Another hotel, The Strand.

  When the call was over Malone made a few changes to what he had written. Then he shook his head.

  “Well?”

  “Everything from cleaners to waitresses,” Malone said. “‘Modelling.’ I mean what girl would fall for the ‘modelling’ bit?”

  Anyone desperate enough: Minogue didn’t say it aloud. He thought of Moser and his maps, the little arrows swooping in with a little peal of bells, colours and lines that shone and moved on the screen.

  “There are places you can go, says Sinnott. Massages that turn into other events, for a price. There’s apartments in Dublin they move around people in. There’s escorts. The most of it is done by phone. You get a name, you phone him. The next week it is a different name, a new number, but the same story. You can add in whatever you like, Sinnott hears. If you like gambling; if you want cocaine. Even fencing stuff goes on.”

  Minogue eyed his list.

  “The girls get threatened,” said Malone. “They use their families back home on them. There’s these ‘fees’ they’re made to pay. And then the places they get the permits for, they’ll hold back pay. If one of them complains, the employer can pull the rug out from under their feet with immigration. Ident – what’s that word, like slaves? Sister Imelda said it.”

  “Indentured?”

  “That’s it.”

  Malone took a deep breath and let his notebook close. At the mention of Sister Imelda’s name, a small glow started in Minogue.

  “She certainly had the measure of you,” he said to Malone. “Did she frighten you?”

  Malone looked over with a serious expression.

  “Easy for you,” he said. “She’s a culchie, like you. Yous have your own thing.”

  “There was more than that to it. She stared at you plenty of times. I saw it. What did she have on you?”

  “Nothing on me,” Malone said. “But she used to do prison visits. To the men, if you don’t mind. She might have met Terry. That’s what was going through my head.”

  Minogue waited. Malone’s eyes had slipped away down the street now. Minogue tried to remember what physical feature distinguished Malone from his twin brother, Terry. Was it the hair? Or some scar on his thumb?

  “She’s only half a nun,” said Malone. “Or something, according to the story.”

  “What story, now.”

  “On account of she gave someone a hiding a while ago. A priest, was the story, but, er, off-duty. She gave him a semiserious dig in the snot, is what I remember.”

  Malone shook himself then and turned the ignition. Minogue was storing away the yarn, imagining the glee that his telling it to Iseult would bring her.

  “George,” he said. “He’d be the one, more than ever. Right?”

  Minogue remembered Sister Imelda talking about how a woman who had told her of a man here, her “driver” she had called him, who could speak Serbo-Croatian.

  “Where to start,” Malone murmured. Minogue looked at his watch

  “Cup of tea and a bun.”

  “Well, I know a great place and all,” said Malone. “Yes I do.”

  “Not McDonald’s. No way.”

  “Temple Bar,” said Malone. “Let’s try some of those places Sinnott mentioned, those bistro-type places. You’d be up on that, monsieur. All that dainty French stuff.”

  Minogue took up his customary sentry duty, watching for traffic that Malone didn’t care about, and had too often ignored, in the Malone School of Motoring.

  “It’s pronounced Muh sieuh. Okay?”

  “Have it your way,” said Malone. “If it’s that important to you.”

  Temple Bar had been the old new Dublin for a good while now. It had been a decade and more since the dreary boarded-up buildings, the cramped lanes and the mean little doorways that did nothing but collected decades of soot and dirt, had had their deliverance. In Minogue’s mind, he took the area to be a way to measure how long it had been since the Celtic Tiger had announced the end of the Sinai years of the Irish search for prosperity itself.

  The only legit parking Malone finally found was all the way up by Christchurch. Minogue didn’t complain. It was a chance to walk, to take in the doings, on their walk back down toward the Temple
Bar, time to figure out a sensible way to go about their search there.

  The two policemen then began to thread their way through the late-afternoon groups that were beginning to gather by the traffic lights and the bus stops. They crossed Dame Street and headed down the lane toward the back of the Clarence Hotel, where Temple Bar really began.

  Malone remembered Iseult’s old studio. He asked Minogue if she was there now.

  “No. She’s gone out of that one. Since Christmas.”

  “One step ahead of the shapers, no doubt.”

  “Shapers” was a few years stale, Minogue knew. He was sure Malone knew too, even more so, but he dimly understood Malone’s reluctance to give up this one. It covered so much here in Dublin now, and it fitted Iseult’s situation. Like a guerrilla ceding positions bit by bit in a door-to-door running fight, Iseult had fought to keep some toehold here for years. Her best hope would be to parley with the winning side in this battle between Art and Commerce, and sell them her art. But then she’d be one of them, she had protested, making Celtic-pattern dinner plates up in the Kilkenny Design shop.

  “What?” Malone asked.

  “What, what?”

  “You said something. Harry Veest?”

  “Arriviste? Did I say it out loud?”

  “Yeah, you said it. You’re talking to yourself again. What is it anyway, French?”

  “It’s French, yes.”

  “French for what?”

  “French for a certain class of person.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  They paused at a restaurant Minogue didn’t remember seeing before.

  “Do we have a system here?”

  “No,” said Malone. “I’ll go in this one.”

  Minogue watched him through the window, talking to a man with violent red tinker hair behind a counter. With the first head shake, Minogue turned away. He studied the parked cars and the few that drifted in from the quays, cars who’d have to make do with lots of tight reverses and delivering vans half blocking the street ahead. It was a pedestrian-only zone just around the corner.

  “No,” said Malone. “No waitresses, dishwashers or the like. Let’s head on toward that bistro place. Oh Seven?”

  Minogue considered dodging into the Clarence Hotel and checking staff there. A huge headache, with shifts and the like. If they let him look the records over without paper to back it up, that is.

  They stopped at a bollard that marked the beginning of the pedestrian area.

  “This is not what you’d call police science, is it,” he said to Malone.

  “Just for an hour or two,” said Malone. “Just to see. Okay?”

  Mostly the people in the restaurants and pubs were helpful enough. Only one – an annoyed, flustered man trying to juggle a delivery and a broken tap – wanted to see a warrant. Malone told him it was only on the television they used warrants.

  Four Englishmen gave them minor grief in one pub. They were at the start of a pub crawl, Minogue believed, more mischievous than aggressive for the moment. They were eerily similar to one another, with the regulation sunglasses stuck on their cropped and gelled hair, and the open shirts with the tails out. One with bleached hair and a ringed nose must have overheard part of his conversation with a barman. “Do you have detectives here in Ireland?” he asked Minogue on the way by.

  Minogue took in the cluster of glasses on the table, and the brazen, reddening eyes. It was considerable work to squelch his reflexive distaste at the man’s accent, and the beefy face of The Ancient Enemy here amongst them again “Hello,” he said. “You’re enjoying your visit, I hope.”

  “We’re here for some craic,” said another.

  “Oh you’ll get plenty of craic,” said Minogue. “You’re in the right place for that.”

  “You’re looking for a baddie, are you then, officer?”

  It was the bleached one again. Cheeky from birth maybe.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “Well, no-one here’s like that, are we lads?”

  “Not yet we’re not,” said another. Laughter followed.

  The urge to mischief came to Minogue quickly, along with his annoyance.

  “Maybe you might know this person though?”

  “Sure! Glad to be of assistance! Go ahead. Officer.”

  “We’re looking for two actually. They may be travelling together. I think they’re from your part of the world, maybe?”

  “Only too happy to oblige. Aren’t we, lads?”

  “Great. One is Jane Austen. Travels with another woman, let me think. Charlotte Brontë. They’re getting on in years now – you’d notice them right away.”

  Minogue saw that only one of them had doubts right away. It looked like the barman, a young fella, had twigged though.

  “Can’t say as I do,” the bleached one said. “How about it, lads?”

  Minogue nodded at the one who was giving him a serious look now.

  “I think he might know them,” he said. “They went missing from the Penguin Library a while back.”

  He gave one of his cards to the barman. Malone was by the window outside now.

  “Maria?” said the barman. “Marina?”

  “Something like that. And there might be the big fella, the man. Goes under the name of George – an accent. A right big fella.”

  The barman nodded. Minogue considered using Malone’s line about George speaking with a Transylvanian accent. Instead he thanked the barman and headed for the street.

  “See you around then, Shamus. Pip-pip, right?”

  Minogue stopped and turned to the group.

  “Shamus? Are you referring to me?”

  Most of them had their faces well under control, but one gave way. The bleached one was not fazed. Minogue gave him a hard look.

  Malone had come in now and he was holding the door.

  “Can’t take a joke? Dish it out but can’t take it, right?”

  Roigh, Minogue repeated within. He continued to study the face. Puffy, designer stubble, bad eyes. Malone had read the situation, and had come over now.

  “This would be a grand opportunity for you to say nothing further,” he said.

  “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”

  Innit, Minogue heard, and he didn’t resist the surge of anger. It must be in the genes, all those centuries: just the accent set him on edge, instantly.

  “It’s a chance you shouldn’t pass up now, Nigel.”

  “Who are you?” the bleached man asked Malone.

  “I’m Bono,” Malone said. “Who are you? And what’s your problem exactly?”

  “Are you an officer of the law too, then?”

  Minogue saw with some satisfaction that the smiles had faded. Malone held up his photocard. Bleached man made a thing about comparing it with the live specimen.

  “Doesn’t look like you though.”

  “Seems to me you’re under the influence there,” Malone said. “If you can’t see something in front of your nose.”

  “Are you going home in the near future?” Minogue asked. “Back to the motherland?”

  “Since when do I need to answer any of your questions?”

  “Since you fit the description of an alien. Have you registered yourself as a resident?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m here with me mates, for a couple of days. We’re here for the craic, like I said. See, I know what craic is?”

  “United fan, are you?” Malone asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  “Curry and chips? Watch the telly, point a bittah? Oi, oi. Right?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt,” said Minogue. “And assume you have a return ticket to Great Britain.”

  He looked around at the group.

  “Safe home now.”

  He eyed the barman.

  “If Nigel here and his mates call for a Black and Tan, phone me. All right?”

  �
��Still fighting the War of Independence,” Malone said outside. “Are you?”

  A little ashamed now, Minogue resisted mentioning his granduncle who’d been shot, or some ancient Connole relations, from his mother’s side, who’d been transported in 1848.

  “Better go with you from now on,” Malone said. “If you’re going to be like that.”

  3 A curse on you, you fool.

  Chapter 17

  April 16, 1987

  EIMEAR KELLY HAD the painters in for a fortnight before she actually put the house up for sale. They made a fuss over Liam, and it was lovely to see. The boss, or foreman, Danny, wasn’t fifty yet himself, but he already had grandchildren of his own. He let Liam watch them, and finally got a few words out of him. The very next day, he’d persuaded Liam to pick up a brush. The others followed suit, even the young fella who seemed to be hungover every day.

  It was Danny, the chain-smoking, grizzle-headed Dubliner who always appeared in a boiler suit, it was he who persuaded her that her future was Dublin. He’d never know, she thought. What won her over was his bluntness: Missus, this house is new. You don’t need to paint anything. You’d be wasting your money.

  It was also the friendliness that evaporated all of the Dublin sarcasm she had grown inured to since she had started here. She’d never say that to Danny, of course, that he’d convinced her. He probably hadn’t an iota of a clue what effect he’d had on her. And he had never once let on that he might know her circumstances, being as there was no man about the house. The nearest he got was a polite question about Declan’s picture in the hall, as he was taking it down. My husband, was all she told him. She left it under the stairs afterwards.

  On the last day of the job, Danny brought a cake. He also brought a present for Liam, a lorry that had things in it. They sat in the kitchen, the two of them, with Liam having a late snooze in his playpen, while the other workmen gathered stuff they’d stored in the garage and upstairs.

  “A grand house,” said Danny. “It’ll go like a flash.”

  Around the house came the sounds of whistling, plastic sheets being put away or crushed, tins being hit.