Islandbridge
Page 35
He held it for a while, whispering to it.
“Put away that stick, so he knows you’re not worth a bite,” he said to Malone. “Let him smell you awhile.”
“I have a torch. I’m turning it on, okay?”
Jacky started growling again. The light went from Malone’s shoe across the stones and back. “To find our way back.”
“I don’t need it. Turn it off.”
“I brought this, here.”
Minogue felt the bottle, and grasped it.
“You certainly took the wrong turn somewhere. How’d you get here?”
“From Dublin? Easy. I just asked someone where a head case would hide.”
“But up here.”
A voice came over to Minogue then, and Jacky’s tail went off.
“I showed him, Uncle Matt.”
“Is that Sean?”
“It is. Da sent the little something. No fags though. He has orders not to.”
Minogue let the dog go. Malone stepped over.
“I’m here for a reason, Tommy. So I’d be obliged if you’d leave me to it.”
Malone didn’t say anything. Minogue tried to see Jacky’s antics with his nephew. Sean was the baby of the family, too shy by far. He loved animals. It looked like he’d get the farm now.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Sean said. “Ye’re all right for the way down, are ye?”
Minogue let his eye go from light to light below the headland, and settled on the yard light for his brother’s farm. He listened to Sean’s footsteps over the stones, the dog’s paws as he bounded from stone to stone ahead of him.
“Nice here,” said Malone. “Except for the fact it’s frigging wet and cold and dark, and we’re in the middle of frigging nowhere.”
Malone shifted a little where he sat when Minogue made no response.
“Nothing personal, okay? I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
He heard Malone’s breath, as though about to say something but deciding not to.
“I was going to phone you, but I decided not to.”
“How’d you know I have a phone? Or that it’s even on?”
“Kathleen told me.”
Something insinuated itself into Minogue’s mind then, and he grew suddenly alert. He thought of how Sean had spoken, how there was something quieter than usual in it. And how quickly Sean had left. It wasn’t like the boy at all.
“You were in the house below?”
“Yeah.”
There were no slags from Malone either, none of the comments about country people and cows he had prepared for without even knowing it.
“You came all the way down here today, from Dublin?”
“Yeah. Sonia’s idea.”
“Sonia? She’s here?”
“She is. She’s in the kitchen below.”
Alarm welled up in Minogue now.
“Something’s happened,” he said.
“I didn’t want to be the one, boss. I really didn’t. Tynan phoned, the bastard.”
“Tell me.”
Malone’s breath came out in small gasps, like he’d been winded.
“Don’t,” Minogue said then, and he pointed at Malone.
“Don’t!”
He brushed by Malone, almost tripping on a ledge. He could make out the darker shadows where the stones gave way to patches of grass. He heard Malone saying something, and he shouted back at him to shut up. He stumbled once and his knee hit off the side of a stone, sending a flash of pain that made him close his eyes.
Up again, he walked through the pain, and even picked up speed. He was cursing now, he knew, and he had already made up his mind that he’d make it over the side of the hill and down into Gortaboher, a small scatter of houses in a valley where even the tourists didn’t linger much. There was still a green road from there that would lead him back into the village three miles or so away. What he would do there, he hadn’t thought about. He knew he had some money somewhere.
He heard Malone’s shout again, farther away.
“Find your own way down!” he yelled back.
He stopped to massage the knee. It didn’t help. There was still a dim, manila sliver of sky over the darker line that marked the sea’s horizon. But if he fell up here, he thought. He swore again, and he pressed on.
His phone was tearing apart the quiet now. He slowed and took it out, and opened it. Kathleen was crying. She got his name out just before he threw it in a long, slow arc into the rocks.