by Brady, John
“You’ll be glad you did.”
“Okay then. Tell me what you want to tell me. Right now.”
She looked at the papers sprawled across the carpet.
“I think we’re getting ready to finish up here then,” she said and reached for the pages that had fallen by the chair. She felt his hand on her arm.
“Leave them. You have something to tell me.”
“You have something to tell me first,” she said.
“You’re scared,” he said. “And you’re not scared. You are one peculiar bird, I’m telling you. Tell me, do you leave little stories lying around, like your husband did, maybe?”
“Give me your word,” she said.
“Jesus, my word? Should I be flattered or what? You mean . . .?”
She met the barman’s eye for a moment.
“If it’s true, what you’re going to tell me?”
She nodded.
“Before we leave here, today?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you.”
“And I don’t have to pay until I find out, later on sometime?”
“Right.”
“Even if one millionth of this bullshit is true, you think I’m ever going to?”
“If you give your word,” she said.
He shook his head and smiled, and drew on his cigarette. She took her first sip of the orange and realized she hadn’t paid for it.
“Okay,” he said. “This is one weird day. But like they say, miracles happen.”
“I’m going to tell you a name. This person is working with the Guards. They’re getting ready for something for you.”
“A name?”
“A man the name of Weekes.”
She had already shifted slightly in her chair, ready to move aside. He was very still, thoughtful.
“Did I hear you right?”
“Yes. That’s what I was told.”
“You,” he said and paused. “You have just done something very very very . . . stupid. You hear me? Do you?”
He looked up from the tip of his cigarette he had been studying.
“If you think, for one minute–”
She flinched and turned away as his arm swept across the table. The glass went a distance before it began to cartwheel across the carpet and break up. She heard someone else’s voice, and a small shriek that could only have been herself. When she took her hands down, Rynn was standing. He looked down at her for several moments, nodding, as the sneer took over his whole face. The dark-haired man was by his side now.
Rynn fumbled in his pocket and looked at the notes in his hand. He pulled out a ten-pound note and let it drop on the table. She heard the faint hiss from the spilled drink in patches across the Formica.
“Go buy yourself an overdose of whatever it is you’re on,” Rynn said. “You lunatic.”
There were spots of orange on the papers too, she saw. She only looked up when she heard the door being kicked open. The barman turned from the door. She knelt on one knee and began picking up the papers.
“Leave the premises there Miss, Missus,” she heard him say, but she kept on.
She stuffed them into the carry-all. He was coming toward her now, saying something about cleaning it up himself, and that she shouldn’t come back. She grabbed the handle of the bag. She didn’t want to look him in the eye.
“You won’t be served here again,” he said.
She got to the door, fumbling and clutching her coat. She made it to the car. Once inside, she burst into tears.
Chapter 24
MINOGUE’S EYES STUNG NOW and he looked away from the screen. Malone kept at it, clicking the mouse in an almost regular tattoo, his head in toward the monitor.
Sinnott had been eyeing the proceedings this past while. Malone had asked him when he was going home. That was when they first arrived into Immigration and Sinnott met them there, three floors up, in the near-deserted offices that adjoined the old CDU in Dublin Castle.
It was after nine. Weariness came to Minogue in his joints now. He rubbed at his knees. There was still a sizeable strain in one where he had knelt in the Temple Bar after the shots. Knelt there, he thought: Iseult would laugh at that.
He looked over the already tired-looking evening paper that Sinnott had left there, and studied the photo of the black family. Chad. Chad? It had been taken in a church by the look of it. The man had a suit and tie, his beaming wife and children – five – were dressed up too.
It was a tabloid headline for sure.
“Our new Irish family? Fáilte! ”
Talk about manipulative, he thought. He rubbed at his eyes and opened them when he heard Malone’s mouse-clicking stop. Malone grunted, it sounded like a no. The face was olive, the man’s on the screen, but the eyes didn’t look right any more than the fat lips.
“How tall?” he called out. Sinnott looked around and then back to the screen.
“One eighty,” he said.
“In real numbers, Joe. Come on.”
“Five eleven, yes. Five eleven.”
Malone went on to the next one, then another. Minogue took out his mobile. He had promised Kathleen he’d leave it on, after she’d tracked him down an hour ago. She was annoyed, she wanted him home. Jim Kilmartin had let slip what had happened. He’d phoned the house to see how Minogue was doing. It didn’t take long for Kathleen to get it out of him.
Sinnott got up.
“You’re a divil for work, Joe,” Minogue said. “Go on home, can’t you?”
“And leave your man here in front of the database?”
Minogue had to remember what a database was again: Sinnott meant the pictures and the vitals, right.
Sinnott sat on the desk.
“No,” he said. “I’m interested. We’ll give it a while yet.”
Malone swore slowly and carefully. It wasn’t George, Minogue saw when he glanced at the screen. Malone had tripped into some other area.
“Click. ‘FY,’” said Sinnott. “Former Yugoslavia. Put in the male and age again.”
“Like I say,” Sinnott said turning to Minogue again. “This is something we’re working on, bit by bit.”
“Prostitution, you said?”
“The whole bit. Drugs, contraband.”
“Trafficking.”
“That’s the man,” said Sinnott. “You’ve got the lingo, I see.”
“Where else could we look for this thug?”
“You mean if he’s not carrying fakes?”
“I get it, Joe, I get it. Don’t rub it in.”
“You’ve been through the talent catalogue earlier, right?”
Minogue remembered turning the pages with their pouches over, pushing down the plastic sometimes to get the glare off the photos beneath.
“I have.”
“Well, you’re pretty well coming to the end of this search, so, with the PIA stuff.”
Minogue didn’t want to ask what the acronym meant again. He let it bounce gently around his mind until he got it.
“Persons of Interest and Associates.”
“Nice,” said Sinnott. “You should come over here on your next tour. On your way to Euro-land.”
Minogue didn’t mind Sinnott slagging a little. He hadn’t met him before, only heard about him from Malone.
“Thing is,” said Sinnott, and drew up his legs so he was seated completely on the desk now, “thing is, it’s always moving. I mean these are very organized people in their own ways. It’s not ‘Russian’ or ‘Ukrainian’ or ‘Romanian’ just. There’s crossovers. One crowd will do a favour for another, if it suits them. Or have a feud – kill one another. How long is this George fella in Ireland?”
Minogue shrugged.
“Long enough to have his own fake numbers on a motorbike,” Malone said. “Long enough to know his way around.”
He swivelled around slowly.
“Long enough to be having dinner with the likes of Jimmy Rynn.”
Sinnott nodded and began swinging his legs.
“That’s disturbing,” he said. “That’s disturbing, all right.”
“I’ll bloody well disturb him when I get a hold of him, I can tell you,” Malone said.
“Rynn,” said Sinnott. “Now there’s someone. How in the hell is he still around, walking the streets?”
“He’s not an iijit like a lot of them,” said Malone. “I’ll give him that. He figured out the whole ‘arm’s-length’ thing years ago. You know? He’s a ‘businessman’ now.”
“No-one’s untouchable, Tommy,” said Sinnott. “Don’t be crying the blues there, man. His day will come.”
“Me bollicks,” said Malone. “He’s like an old crocodile or something, just his eyes over the water. Sees everything, waits. Takes his time. Pays people to look out for him. Pays well, I hear. Like it or not, we haven’t made much of a dent in him yet.”
The talk died out. Even Malone seemed ready to call it a day. Outside their island of light the storeys of darkened offices loomed. For a few moments, Minogue imagined the three of them were on an island of light, alone, and a world away from the middle of lopsided, swollen Dublin.
“There’s fierce amount of headers floating around all over,” Sinnott murmured.
“You can learn a lot from looking in a mirror,” Malone said and yawned. Sinnott looked up in a lazy half-smile.
“No wonder you got that puck in the snot. I meant fellas like your lad, ‘George.’ After all the wars and that over in Yugoslavia. That sort of thing.”
“Ah, he’s gone to ground,” said Minogue and stood. “For tonight anyway. I wouldn’t doubt but he had a car parked handy enough too.”
“You know,” said Sinnott, “from what I hear in England, they have a system down pat. I don’t want to disillusion yous now but . . .”
“Disillusion us, Joe,” said Minogue.
“I dare you,” yawned Malone.
“Car. Local associates, affiliates–”
“A few identities tucked away under the mattress?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
“Jaysus, Joe,” said Malone. “You’re a cheerful bastard.”
“I’m going,” Minogue said. “Nothing’s getting done on this tonight.”
Sinnott went to the monitor, closed the program, and then shut down the computer.
“You two didn’t see that,” he said.
“Right,” said Minogue.
Sinnott left two lights on. He locked and tested the door out to the hallway. Minogue waited by a window that looked across the park toward the Clock Tower. There was a faint vibration, a distant melody from music being played somewhere. To his right the dark bulk of the oldest part of Dublin Castle, the Tower that had housed the Garda Museum for a decade now. From that same tower chiefs had been imprisoned and tortured, and Fiach O’Byrne had escaped some time in the 1500s, fleeing on foot over the snowbound Wicklow Mountains.
Minogue’s mind went out over the rooftops now, in the glare of Dublin’s lights, into the suburbs and finally over the sprinkle of lights that petered out where the mountains took over.
“Prostitutes,” Malone murmured. “I’m telling you.”
Traffic, Minogue thought, and kept his inner eye on the empty nighttime folds of West Wicklow.
“How can we thank you, Joe,” he said outside.
“Keep your gob shut about that database will do,” said Sinnott.
Minogue affected a smile but sought out Sinnott’s eyes to signal otherwise. The floodlight by the Upper Castle Yard showed through the sparse hairs in the beard he guessed Sinnott must have grown to cover the pits left by ferocious acne.
“Maybe Tommy here will stand us a pint,” he said. “Being as it’s him got us drug into this caper.”
Malone didn’t protest. The night air felt clammy and tired out itself on Minogue’s face as they headed over to where they’d parked. It was some concert somewhere he was hearing far off he decided.
The sound got louder as they approached the gate out onto Dame Street. He heard lots of tambourines and bits of a choral sound that sounded different. Plenty of tapping. Shakers? Drums?
There was a Guard manning the gate, and he seemed to know Sinnott.
“Join in, outside,” he said. “Some craic out there, I never seen the like, I tell you.”
“What is?”
“There’s some class of a concert thing, to do with that African man.”
“What man?”
“The plane, the man who fell down out of the plane,” said the Guard, and shifted his jacket. “They want to bring the man’s family here, twenty something of them. I don’t know how or when it got going, but it’s getting bigger by the minute. Go on, have a look.”
There were groups gathered by Dublin Castle gate, and they were thickening into a pretty sizeable crowd. It had no amplification for the instruments. People were swaying and clapping hands. The traffic had almost stopped.
In the Millennium Park, under the plaque commemorating the three IRA men that had been tortured to death here by the Black and Tans, a group of about a dozen had found some way to get up on a height. Most of them were black. There were drums and tambourines and the shakers he had suspected. He didn’t know what they were singing. He asked Malone.
“I don’t speak African,” Malone shouted back.
A hand-done sign wobbled as someone tried to attach it to a pole. Miracle? Then the music faltered and a cheer went up. A camera flashed. Minogue saw the figure bound up beside the singers and raise an arm in a fist. Black clothes, wraparound glasses . . .
“Jaysus,” said Malone. “Look who it is.”
Chapter 25
October 24, 1999
SHE LEFT THE WINDOWS OPEN all day, even with the late autumn nip in the air. Hallowe’en was a week away. She had lit a fire under the builders, so she had. They hadn’t been one bit pleased. But if they’d had their way, they’d still be foostering about here at Christmas – or even into the New Year, for God’s sake. Some days she had even wondered if they had some plot to deprive her of a proper, finished, renovated house in time for Christmas.
Liam had moaned about the cold in the house. She tried to explain the need to get the smells of cement and paint and everything out as much as possible, especially before the guests arrived. He was still in a bit of sulk at having moved, to be honest. She’d had words with him, and he flounced out. She called after him to be here by four but he didn’t answer. He’d probably get the bus over to his friend Shane’s house, three down from the Kilmartins’ old home. Ah, The Single Child Syndrome, she thought again: The Little Emperor. But what odds, she decided yet again: he could be managed, and he was on the right track towards his Finals.
Jim came home early. He had been on night work twice in the past week, with a case near the canal, and then when someone was found in a house on fire.
“Can you smell the cement or the plaster now?”
“No,” he said. “But they’ll need to keep their bloody coats on when they come over if we don’t get cracking.”
Promotion was the excuse, and Jim had been nervous all week about it. The squad lads would be here, most of them. Hoey was going through a bad patch, Jim told her. Someone’d needed to keep an eye on him, and the drink.
“Kathleen and Matt?”
“’Course they are.”
“He’ll watch out for Seamus . . . ?”
“Hoey? Matt will. He misses nothing. He only lets on he’s an iijit.”
She watched him try to close the new window in the dining room. They did a lot of squeaking, but the man said that was normal.
“Will we put on a fire, Jim, what do you think?”
He swore and there was a harsh click from the window. She surveyed the plates and the napkins she’d found in Switzers, and the silverware from the Kilkenny Design. You had to be careful, she knew, not too overreach, not to have fancy things in cutlery. The flowers weren’t overdone either.
“I love a fire,” he said. “But you don’t want people sitting around, tha
t’s the trouble.”
“Oh God,” she said, remembering. “What does the Assistant Commissioner drink, the new one, is it Italian?”
He gave her a glare.
“Arra Sweet and Holy Jesus, Maura, will you not be worrying about him. He’s easy pleased. Sure isn’t he a Monaghan man?”
“His wife, what’s her name?”
“Noreen.”
“What does she like again?”
“I don’t know. But if she’s anything like the man she married, she’ll drink a pint out of a whore’s boot.”
“I hope you’re not going to be talking like that tonight.”
He gave her a mock salute.
“Come on, Jim. Don’t be like that.”
He tugged on the new curtains and gazed out at the rubble still left in the garden.
“I know we’re high-mucky-mucky now, girl of my heart, but you can’t take the bog out of the man. It’s a party we’re having, right? In our house?”
She thought of reminding him how much engineering had gone on to get him to this ‘our.’”
“It’s a dinner party,” she said. “Not a tinker’s bonfire.”
He made a face and walked over to the bottles of wine. He began to study the labels.
“It’s mixing business with pleasure,” she said.
He started humming, “Lannigan’s Ball.”
“I’ll have my crowd from work too, you know. It’s social of course, but we’re going to be enjoying ourselves.”
He hummed louder and slipped in words.
“Networking,” she said. “As much as celebrating the promotion and that.”
“And your goings-on,” he said.
“Certainly,” she said. “That’s why I asked a few clients along, but easygoing.”
He looked up from his study of the label.
“Well Christ, there’s one you’d better not be bringing.”
“Who? I don’t get it.”
“That Rynn fella.”
The name seemed to hang in the air for a moment.
“That’s not funny. Where did that come from?”
He beamed, and he came over and grabbed her.
“I know. I know,” he said. “I’m only trying to get a rise out of you. His name came up, I was talking to a fella starting up that new section in Serious Crimes.”
