Kaddish in Dublin imm-3

by John Brady

  Kaddish in Dublin

  ( Inspector Matt Minogue - 3 )

  John Brady

  John Brady

  Kaddish in Dublin

  CHAPTER ONE

  Autumn. A farmer’s wife in Tipperary had stabbed her husband thirty-seven times on the previous Saturday night. He had not struggled.

  “He was terrible drunk and him coming home from the pub,” Kilmartin said. “She might have hit him dead on with the first one. No wonder he didn’t stir.”

  “They have five children. She has, I mean,” said Minogue.

  Chief Inspector James Kilmartin looked to the front of the report. “Five is right. The oldest is nine and there’s an infant just a year old.”

  “She never reported him at all. Not even to her own family,” Minogue continued.

  “And that may be what’ll sink her in court, I don’t mind telling you, Matt. She’s in dire need of someone to corroborate the beatings. Even a record of a complaint, a remark to a friend. But sure you saw yourself where they live. A pigsty.”

  Kilmartin and Minogue had gone the previous Wednesday to Cahir, Co. Tipperary, where the woman, Marguerite Ryan, was held in jail, and had been driven out to the Glen of Aherlow by two local Gardai. The farmhouse was a squat, whitewashed affair with cement floors. Minogue walked through it, appalled. Clothes lay scattered in the bedrooms, as though a violent storm had moved through the house. The blood had dried to a chocolate colour on the bedclothes. The woman’s sister had taken the children. Minogue, a farmer’s son, had been unnerved by the filth of the place, the rusted pieces of scrap iron and refuse which had gathered in small mounds by the front of the house over the years.

  “She admitted that he just came in and fell into bed: he didn’t lay a hand on her,” Kilmartin said. He turned two pages and searched for lines he had noted.

  “ ‘He was in a terrible drunken state’-this is her statement-‘and he was muttering and cursing and I didn’t know what he was saying. He got into the bed and he was asleep almost straight away. I was in a humour of great despair and fear for several weeks, seeing as my husband had been drinking heavily and threatening myself and our oldest, Sean’,” Kilmartin intoned.

  “What do you make of that bit-‘in a humour of great despair and fear’? Melodrama. It’s like an expression out of a book.”

  Minogue, irritated with Kilmartin’s remark, said nothing.

  “Or sounds like words someone else would use — barrister defending her, don’t you think? ‘My client was in a humour of great-’ ”

  “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s not be picking holes in things.” Minogue cut him short.

  “ ‘And I lay awake for many hours that night as had been my affliction these many months, waiting for the first light of day’-aw Jases, Matt, this is nearly too much. It’s like a romance book or some class of a thing. ‘The first light of day.’ ”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m saying that it’s a mighty peculiar way of saying things, mighty peculiar entirely for a first statement… It’s like she practised it in her mind before saying it, preparing a defence. You know what that is, Matt, don’t you?”

  “It’s florid prose.”

  “It means she had her mind made up a long time ago. That’s how her account comes out so put-together.”

  “Like she had her speech from the dock prepared well in advance.”

  “Yep. She had everything planned. That’s premeditated murder, if the State has the nerve to so prosecute Mrs. Ryan.”

  Minogue did not want to argue the toss with Jimmy Kilmartin. Mrs. Ryan was being held for the murder of one Francis Xavier Ryan, her husband of ten years and the father of their five children. Mr. Ryan had farmed seventy-odd acres of good land (in fact his wife had done most of the work) near the village of Newtown in the Glen of Aherlow. Ryan, named after a favourite saint of Irish Catholics, had been twelve years her senior. He farmed poorly, drank most of the money which came into the house, and was jealous of their oldest child, frequently berating him and knocking him about for neglecting chores on the farm. Fran, as he was known locally, had been beating his wife regularly and methodically within months of their marrying.

  “And prosecuting’s exactly what the WAM are daring us to do,” Kilmartin added.

  “WAM… wait a minute. Oh, yes: the Women’s Action Movement.”

  “The same bunch. They sound like bloody paratroops. A crowd of well-fed radicals and students and actresses from Dublin, never did a hand’s turn on a farm. They’re the ones that don’t eat meat and tell the bishops to eff off. Lesbians and what have you.”

  “They’ve raised money for Mrs. Ryan already.” Minogue tried to divert him.

  “Sure haven’t they plenty of it, isn’t that what I’m saying? All well-to-do. They’ll make a big thing out of this, so they will.”

  Both policemen fell to reading paragraphs from the report again.

  “… And see this here, page what is it, page seven, I have it marked, where she says, ‘Were it not for my children I would not have endured these years.’ ” Kilmartin paused. “I’ll never understand that. Fair enough, I say, but how were the children brought into the world in the first place, I say. It takes two to tango, amn’t I right?”

  “Jimmy, have you ever heard of contraception? Can you remember back that far?” Minogue murmured.

  Kilmartin who, like Minogue, was within five years of early retirement, affected to smile.

  “Ah, you’re not one of those maniacs wanting to put any girl over the age of ten on the pill and turn the churches into bingo halls, are you? Sure, all a woman has to do is say no.”

  “And if she says no but her husband has his way anyway, that’s rape then, isn’t it?”

  “Here, hold on a minute,” Kilmartin temporized with his palms up as he worked on staunching Minogue’s attack of logic. “That’s not how things are done, Matt. That’s a grey area, I mean. There’s no plain and simple answers to this business.”

  “Let’s be reasonable. Marriage is a sacrament too. Man proposes, God disposes.”

  Minogue held off his sarcasm. “Well, do you think she’ll be charged with murder in the first degree?”

  Kilmartin frowned. “Well now, it’s not my decision, is it? The Director of Public Prosecutions lays the charges. Tell you the truth, I’ll be as happy as Larry if this Women’s Action Movement crowd concentrate their efforts on the mob in the Department of Justice and leave us Gardai to get on with the work. I don’t relish the thought of another effort like the Kerry Babies,” Kilmartin said, sucking in air through his teeth.

  Minogue had had an earful on that topic from his daughter, Iesult. Even Kathleen had prodded at him. A woman in Kerry had been charged with infanticide some time before. The police work had included bullying her during interviews to invent evidence for her trial. Minogue had not seen Iesult so angry since she had been a small child. She had been quite right when she shouted at him that the woman was condemned-what had she called the detectives? Brutal, patriarchal rednecks? — for being some class of a whore and consequently was obviously guilty of the lesser crime of killing her child at birth. ‘Tried and sentenced before she even got near a courtroom!’ Iesult had shouted down the stairs at him as he headed out the door one morning.

  “You’re right there,” Minogue concluded. He well knew that Inspector James Kilmartin of the Murder Squad had a different reason than he for wishing to ward off such an eventuality.

  Kilmartin’s secretary, Eilis, drew a draught of cigarette smoke and the smell of paint into his office when she entered.

  “Is it yourself that’s in it, Eilis,” Kilmartin said. Minogue noted the mixture of slight apprehension and irritation in his voice. Perhaps Ei
lis treated Jimmy Kilmartin thus by way of goading him into asking her to knock on doors first? It was widely believed amongst the detectives who worked in the Murder Squad that Jimmy Kilmartin feared his secretary.

  “None other. There’s a body lying out on the beach in Killiney. Washed up a half an hour ago. Dalkey station called about it. They have men there now.”

  “Are they sure it’s not somebody sunbathing, now?” Kilmartin winked. He shot a stage glance at the grey sky over the rooftops outside his window.

  Eilis blinked once and met Minogue’s eyes for a moment.“It seems unlikely. The person in question was shot in the head several times.”

  At Minogue’s suggestion, Kilmartin had Detective Seamus Hoey drop them at Pearse Station. Shea Hoey showed no sign of surprise at being told to drive out to Killiney and meet the two officers there.

  The regular, clean, fast service on the new Dublin Area Rapid Transit-the DART-trains still surprised and pleased Dubliners. Its efficiency silenced all but the irredeemable cynics, those inhabitants of the city who enjoyed Dublin the more for being able to find daily reminders of its chaos and decrepitude. Kilmartin had brought a posse of comments aboard the train.

  “There’s no name for it though, is there?”

  “For what?”

  “Killing your husband. ‘Husbandicide’?”

  “Try patriarchicide,” Minogue observed. The train hummed out from Ballsbridge Station. “Iesult reminds me about patriarchy every now and then. She’s a feminist.”

  “Mmmm.” Kilmartin rubbed his nose.

  “She frightens the daylights out of me half the time. I don’t know what she’ll do next.”

  “Is she still with that odd fella?”

  “Pat the Brain? She is still keen on him. I must say, I like him. He’s a droll character.”

  Kilmartin grunted and looked out the window. The bay, a leaden sheet spread out to Howth, drew suddenly next to the railway line. Dublin Bay was darker than the sky, itself seamless and low.

  “She admitted to sharpening the kitchen knife the day before too,” Kilmartin observed.

  Minogue turned from the window. Kilmartin’s face was slack, eyes glassily fixed on the horizon. He too had been hypnotized by the sea. The tide brought ripples and gentle swells obliquely by the train. Minogue felt confused, pleased to be confused, by the motion of the train. What was it about trains that made a body feel removed from the local world?

  “Look, Jimmy. She may not have consciously prepared for any crime. It may have been unthinkable, don’t you see, so another side to her took over.”

  “Mad, you mean. She can’t plead that.”

  Minogue refused to be drawn.

  “She woke up in the middle of the night and she went to the kitchen, got the knife and… Bob’s your uncle. I hope she doesn’t claim she was in a trance or something. She must have been wide awake and calculating to stick him in the heart first time. You know how it is with an amateur-they’ll break a half dozen ribs before they get near the heart. But your man was asleep so she could find her spot and… Of course she might be used to killing farm animals or that, I suppose.”

  Minogue imagined the deed. Ryan still in his clothes passed out, drunk, on the bed. Snoring probably. Marguerite Ryan can’t sleep. Something wakes her up… A knife in her strong, capable hands, she plunges it-

  “Then thirty-six more for good measure,” Kilmartin murmured. “Seven or eight of those alone would have killed him, too. A tough piece of work, Mrs. Ryan.”

  Kilmartin turned to Minogue as the train pulled into Seapoint Station. “Plenty of muscle on her after doing all the work on the farm, I’ll bet. And Ryan in the pub all day swallowing pints. Ha ha.”

  Minogue did not think it wise to let Kilmartin in on the fact that Marguerite Ryan was a heroine in the Minogue household. Even Kathleen had sided with their daughter while Minogue tried to finish his breakfast faster that he might escape further wrath. He felt more than uneasy being held answerable for patriarchy Irish-style, as Iesult put it.

  “Ah, but did you read the letters to the papers? Jesus wept. People putting pen to paper and saying she should be given the farm and not even charged with manslaughter. Sent back to her children and her house as if nothing had happened,” Kilmartin added in an aggrieved tone. He did not take his gaze away from the window.

  Neither man spoke further until the train doors opened in Dalkey. A youth with a hair cut which reminded Minogue of a Mohican, but with wires trailing from both ears, slouched into the train. He sized up the two policemen, sneering a little, Minogue believed, and flopped as if shot into a seat. He twitched occasionally as he lay there and played chords with gusto on an imaginary guitar.

  “Frankenstein,” Kilmartin muttered as they stepped on to the platform in Killiney. “Ask him if he can spell haircut.”

  Minogue and Kilmartin trudged up the steps to the pedestrian bridge which led from the station to the beach. They paused on the bridge and saw again the orange markers, the dozen or so men standing near the plastic tarp. The orange seemed to be the only colour abroad that day amid the greys of beach and sea and sky. The beach was too soft to allow the Garda cars to drive out on to the sand.

  “Never came to a murder site on a train before. Feels sort of classy, I must say,” declared Kilmartin. He looked to his watch. “Twenty minutes only. Gob, that’s fantastic entirely.”

  Minogue nodded. The two laboured across a stony part of the beach. Kilmartin started with the two Gardai from Dalkey Station; Minogue went to the body. A light breeze was coming in off the water. Sea-smells, the soft lick of the water on sand. A district detective greeted Minogue by name but it took Minogue two tries to remember his surname.

  “Gerry. Gerry Sweeny. Now I have it. Who’s this victim here, Gerry?”

  “We don’t know yet. He has clothes on but there’s nothing in his pockets,” replied Sweeny. He hunkered down beside Minogue and drew the heavy plastic back from the face.

  Minogue held his breath and let his eyes out of focus. The sound of the sea filled the air around him. He looked to Sweeny’s face and found that he too was grimacing. With a great effort Minogue looked to the face again. The wound over the left eyebrow had to be an exit wound: it was too large, too ragged to be otherwise. The dead man’s skin reminded Minogue of a fish. The gaping hole was now a lilac, blubbery flower on the man’s forehead. At least the seawater had washed him clean.

  “There’s two on this side by the ear,” Sweeny mumbled. “They came out the neck on your side.”

  Minogue didn’t want to push the ear back to see. “What?”

  “This side, Inspector, there’s two distinct gunshot wounds here. As well as the one in the back of the head. Hard to miss that one, I’m telling you.”

  Sweeny rose. His shoes crunched pebbly sand underfoot. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Minogue stayed on his hunkers, already putting up that shield between his own shock and fear and the body which had been a living person. Still, he felt that alertness and dim excitement come to him as his horror gave way. He made a conscious effort to relax his eyes and let them wander about the body.

  “Well,” he whispered. “I’ll stake money that this is a secondary site. I wonder how far away from here he was actually shot, though…”

  “Beg your pardon, sir?” said Sweeny, swallowing.

  Minogue didn’t answer. Already his trained eye was looking for ligature marks. He allowed his gaze to move slowly from place to place on the exposed skin. The abrasions looked postmortem, he thought. He took out a pencil and poked it under the dead man’s shirt, lifted the shirt-tail slowly, and immediately spotted the edge of a lividity which he guessed discoloured the back of the body completely. Minogue breathed out slowly through pursed lips.

  “Ow,” said Sweeny.

  “You’re telling me,” Minogue whispered. “He was lying somewhere for a while. That’s a start, I suppose.”

  “But he’s not long in the water, I’m thinking,” said Swe
eny.

  Minogue nodded. He had seen no marbling on the neck at all. Easing the pencil out from under the flap of shirt, he replaced the plastic over the body, and felt the first currents of discouragement move in on his thoughts. Whatever physical transfers had occurred between the victim and the killer at the murder scene, he thought, had most likely been washed and scraped away by the sea.

  “Wasn’t bound or anything when he was found?” Minogue heard himself ask.

  “No, sir. There’s no marks on the wrists. It’s an execution, isn’t it?”

  Minogue kept his gaze on the sea.

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t feel up to checking the body proper this minute now,” Sweeny whispered. “I’ll leave it for yous professionals on the Squad.”

  “Thanks,” said Minogue.

  A doctor, to judge by the BMW he had left moored next to the squad cars, was walking down the beach toward the body. He was youngish, earnest and grim, swinging his bag as he hurried with a Garda in tow. Minogue didn’t recognize either man. He stood and looked inland. Cliffs: the steep hill of Killiney above, a few feet short of the official status of mountain. The sky felt close, almost malicious.

  A van drew slowly on to the beach. Seeing he could go no further, the driver reversed toward the squad cars. Minogue knew one of the scenes-of-the-crime policemen who stepped out of the van and began donning boiler-suits. Kilmartin left the group of policemen and began walking toward the van. Minogue found it impossible to remember the dead man’s face. His concentration had been stolen by the wounds, and he wondered what kind of a gun or a bullet had caused that. Three shots at least. Revenge? For what? How had the body turned up here? A pair of seagulls scratched the dull mid-morning with their screaming overhead.

  Kilmartin was standing next to him now. “All right,” he grunted. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go, Matty.”

  Kilmartin scrutinized the pebbles and sand next to his feet before he knelt down heavily and turned back the plastic.