A Carra ring imm-6

by John Brady

  Fogarty had brought them a smudgy photocopy of the patrol and duty schedule. Missing persons and stolen vehicle lists were displayed prominently on the wall of the office by the schedules and the radio plug-ins. Too prominent, too neatly aligned.

  The plastic taste of the tea grew sharper. PVC tea. Malone asked Mitchell to go over the route again. Mitchell drew his finger east from the horseshoe area by the terminals toward the long-term car park.

  Could he remember the exact times for the checkpoints? Mitchell thought that he could.

  Minogue stood. The aftertaste from his last gulp was pure plastic. He dropped the cup into the can.

  “Take your time there,” he said to Mitchell. “And don’t be worrying. There are no wrong answers, now.”

  Malone joined him by the door.

  “There has to be video here, Tommy. Get a layout of where they have them. And see what they cover, like a good man. Then we’ll start rounding up the tapes ”

  Malone eyed Mitchell straining to get his times right.

  “Fogarty is fussing around a lot. He’d be the one for the — ”

  The first man in the door was wearing sunglasses. Minogue didn’t recognize him at first. More people piled in. Soft leather jackets, a woman with very short hair, a brace of cameras around her neck. Fogarty came next. He looked very pleased with himself. Perfume — men’s or women’s, Minogue couldn’t tell — began to take over the room. Someone was smoking Gauloises or Gitanes too.

  “Won’t be long, lads,” Fogarty said. “We’ll have you en route ASAP.”

  Minogue recognized the manager Daly, bald on top, that ponytail, just like Damian Little had said. The band members looked shagged. Daly took off his sunglasses and rubbed at his eyes. Minogue began to smell whiskey off someone’s breath. Fogarty began rounding up chairs. The group shuffled and glanced around the canteen. Mr. 21 Byrne, the nickname off the bus he’d been born on. Crowley, the Crow Mooney, that was the drummer’s name. A nephew of neighbors of Kathleen growing up in Harolds Cross, Minogue recalled. Kevin Mooney, Batman, the fans called him. Daly threw up an arm and looked at his watch.

  “Soon as we can,” Fogarty said. “First up. You can slip out there and go around the side of the terminals. Be off in a flash.”

  Batman Mooney sank into a chair and lit a cigarette. He nodded at Malone.

  “How’s it going there?”

  Malone chewed his gum hard, burst a bubble behind his teeth.

  “Not so bad,” he said. “Yourself?”

  Mooney shrugged and blew out smoke. He ran his fingers through his stubbly, streaked hair and looked at them. Minogue watched the photographer twist on a lens and focus on Mooney. He mugged for her.

  “Trapped in Dublin,” he groaned. “Sober…! Aarrghh! Help!”

  She moved around him. The camera shutter went off in bursts. A heavyset man with an earring and a brush cut came through the door. He nodded at Daly and shook his head once.

  “Fuck,” muttered Daly. “ Fuck! When, then, for Christ’s sake?”

  Daly yanked a cell phone out of his pocket. Did they make them that small now, Minogue wondered. His own phone began to ring. Damian Little: the site van was here. The bomb squad finally had a key in. They were ready to open the Escort.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Daly. “Is every Garda phone engaged these days?”

  Minogue closed his phone.

  “Not anymore.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The phone,” said Minogue. “Don’t be phoning us anymore now, like a good man. We need the lines kept open.”

  Daly looked to Fogarty.

  “Guards,” Fogarty said. Daly took in Minogue’s expression.

  “Garda, ah…?”

  “Minogue. We’re waiting too.”

  Daly raised his hands and let them drop. The camera was clicking again. Minogue walked to the doorway. Malone paused by Batman Mooney.

  “Thanks,” he said. “The picture? She’ll keep it under her pillow, you know.”

  “Great. Catherine, yeah?”

  “That’s right.” Malone said. “Me ma.”

  Mooney gave him a blank stare.

  “Are you really a cop?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you.” Mooney nodded at Minogue. “Him, he looks like a farmer. So he must be a cop, right? You, though, I’d be wondering.”

  “Yeah, I’m a Guard.”

  “And your ma’s into the scene? With the music like?”

  “ ’Course she is. We all are, man. I’ve a niece runs her own fan club on yous.”

  Batman Mooney sighed. He drew hard on his cigarette.

  “Tell the niece I’ll be looking for her at the Point concert next month,” he said.

  “I’ll tell her,” Malone said. “Thanks very much. Oh, and by the way.” Mooney stopped in midstretch.

  “She asked me to remind you,” Malone went on. “She wants her blouse back.”

  The rain was coming in sheets across the lights now. The plastic cracked, hissed. Christy Griffin was cursing. Not real cursing, Minogue reflected. There was no real relish, no comfort to it.

  The rain had soaked in under Minogue’s arms. He reached up to help Griffin pull down the plastic again. They’d need a couple of lights in closer after they had sealed the back of the car. He balanced on one leg to look down at the side of Shaughnessy’s face again. An anorak, a mountaineering type of coat. It looked like it was made of that dear stuff, the Gore-tex, it was called. A black T-shirt.

  Malone had been helping tie the plastic by the front bumper. Pasty-faced, the eyes darting around on him. Well, Shaughnessy’s face wasn’t as bad as Minogue had expected. Except for the color, that is. Griffin was talking.

  “Where do you want the opening left?” he asked again. Minogue stood back.

  “Too blowy, Christy. Let it die down a bit, take the pressure off us here.”

  He held the plastic tighter and studied the hand. He couldn’t see any scratches or bloodstains even. The lividity in the face didn’t help. This man wasn’t dead the six days he was missing. He handed the flap to Griffin and hunkered down by the taillight of the Escort. A runnel dropped onto his neck.

  “Hold it over me, Larry, for the love of God, man!”

  Malone had moved in beside him.

  “Jases,” he whispered.

  “Head first,” Minogue murmured.

  He studied the drawn-up legs. A twenty degree tilt, he guessed. The blood would have come out steady enough.

  “The blood drained from the head for the few hours before the air did its bit.”

  Malone wiped rainwater from the hair above his ears.

  “Drained into someplace under the boot,” he said. “Then leaked out?”

  “Three or four hours is as much as you’d get blood draining out, Tommy.”

  “Kept pouring — draining out, like — when the car was left here?”

  Minogue went down on his knees. He squinted at the stain.

  “See the dent in the panel there?” said Griffin. “You’ll find a hole there.”

  Minogue stood. His head pushed at the plastic.

  “Thanks, Christy.”

  Griffin rearranged the roof. Minogue waited for a lull in the gusts before stepping out. The rain hit his face like needles. Malone backed out after him. Griffin’s face sticking out of his hood reminded Minogue of a big, truculent toddler.

  “Have to keep it tight, Christy. No choice now. Give it a half an hour.”

  Griffin began to secure the tent around the Escort. “Bloody awful,” Minogue heard him mutter. Two more scene technicians showed up from the site van. Minogue reminded them about rain coming in under the car on the blood. He handed Malone the phone.

  “Keep tabs on Mitchell, Tommy, will you? And poke around with any other staff. Press him on the times again. It’ll count for a lot if we can fix the time. I’ll do me calls from the site van. We’ll see what we have to do if the rain keeps up.”

  “Sixteen million,
” Damian Little repeated.

  The heater in the site van hadn’t made much difference. Minogue’s coat was saturated. His shoulders felt like they were encased in half-set cement.

  “That’s quid too,” Little added. “The last album.”

  Minogue checked his watch. Little rubbed the window and peered out.

  “No tax either,” said Little. “Not a bloody penny. They’re artists, you see.”

  He turned to Minogue again and cocked an ear.

  “That frigging tent of yours might be flying up out of there yet.”

  Griffin and his crew were still securing the scene. Minogue had watched him driving masonry nails into the tarmac to hold ropes over the tent.

  “I’ve a young fella mad about them,” Little said. “Wanted the price of a ticket there a few weeks ago. Guess how much?”

  Minogue shivered. He looked over the diagram he had sketched of the boot of the Escort. There’d be blood collected under the spare wheel.

  “Tenner,” he said.

  “A tenner?” Little scoffed. “Where have you been? Go on out of that.”

  “Twenty, then.”

  Little tapped the side of a video camera case.

  “Twenty-two fifty! And that was a deal, I was told. A deal.”

  Minogue studied the copy of the passport photograph again. The nose, maybe that was the Irish part of Shaughnessy’s face.

  “Not a penny tax,” Little was saying. “The States, Japan. Oz. Everywhere. They spend half the year in the air.”

  “Art,” said Minogue. “We’ve plenty to spare. Why not spread it around?”

  Little laughed. It was clear to Minogue that Damian Little had had this conversation before and that he would have it, in varying forms, again.

  “Art? Ever notice when they sing, all of them now, not just them — they all sing in American accents?”

  “What age are you now, Damian?”

  Little waved a finger at him.

  “Don’t try that one on me. Nothing to do with it.”

  Minogue tested the sleeves of his coat with his elbows. Wet through, a strange musty smell. Had the rain died down a bit?

  “Sixteen million,” said Little. “That’s a hell of a lot of jack for stuff that doesn’t even rhyme half the time.”

  “ ‘ Let the storms come, take them all | Shake the pillars, make them fall,’ ” said Minogue. “If it’s rhymes you want.”

  “Jesus, I can’t even hear words half the time.”

  “What about ‘Graveyard Baby’?”

  Little rubbed at the window.

  “Here’s someone over now.”

  Malone, bareheaded, water dripping down his face, appeared in the doorway.

  “Christy Griffin says come on out,” he said. “The rain’s dying down for the while anyway. He wants his orders.”

  Minogue got up slowly. Christy Griffin says. Was that the way professionals worked? The backs of his trousers clung to his legs. He could almost hear his joints creak. Mr. Shaughnessy awaited. Six days missing, he had been, now missing no longer.

  Kathleen Minogue was standing in the doorway. It had been the phone all right. Morning, then.

  “Sorry, love,” she said. “It’s work ”

  He rolled onto his back.

  “It’s five to nine,” Kathleen said “I have to be off.”

  He listened again to the distant traffic on the Kilmacud Road.

  “Raining still, is it?”

  “No. He said he’d wait.”

  “Who said.”

  “John Tynan.”

  Minogue yanked back the duvet and sat on the edge of the bed. It was gone three when he’d hit the sack, he remembered. He pulled his dressing gown off the hook and headed for the stairs.

  Kathleen followed him.

  “I’m away now,” she said. “Anne’s outside.”

  She opened the door, she took a step back, she kissed him. The air across his ankles made him shiver The hedge by the window was clustered with raindrops. From the kitchen he heard the fanfare for the news. He rubbed his eyes again. The exhaust from Anne O’Toole’s Volkswagen floating up over the hedge had a blue tint.

  “Hello. John, is it?”

  “And yourself. All in order, are you, save for the late night?”

  “Touch and go for now. I’d be hoping for a fit of clear thinking shortly.”

  “Good. A cup of something now would speed the process, would it not?”

  Minogue watched the ancient and badly driven Volkswagen Polo take the bend around by the shops. The shocks were gone now, it was burning oil. My wife, he thought, my wife in that damned jalopy

  “You’d be doing me a favor,” said Tynan “That cup of something on Mary Street. Upstairs by the window?”

  Bewleys, Minogue gathered.

  “Three-quarters of an hour then?” Tynan tried.

  Minogue scratched a loose fiber on the knee of his pajamas.

  “Fair enough. Should I be bringing anything with me?”

  “Yes you should. Your ablest recollections of last night at the Garda Club.”

  Minogue stopped scratching. He watched his fingernail turn pink again. “Do you know a journalist by the name of Gemma O’Loughlin?”

  “So that’s who she was,” Minogue murmured. “Or what she was.”

  Minogue couldn’t take his eyes off the couple signing to one another at a table by the fireplace. They seemed to be getting such joy from their silent conversation. Tynan’s driver, Sergeant Tony O’Leary, was eyeing them too. He watched O’Leary resume his pretend study of the massive stained-glass window over Mary Street below. Maybe O’Leary was replaying or plotting the perfect stroke on Ballybunion. A golf nut, O’Leary. He had done a stint with the UN in Africa and there had been a picture in the newspapers of him playing golf on some dusty plateau there.

  Tony O’Leary had returned to duty in Dublin just in time to put his foot in it and thereby come to Tynan’s attention, ultimately to be posted to the commissioner’s staff. O’Leary had remained stubborn in his refusal to recant a statement about an arrest he’d witnessed. His statement had been used to defend and then acquit a thug with a long criminal record, who’d alleged mistreatment by nine arresting Guards during a free-for-all in a pub on Talbot Street. O’Leary had crossed a line within the force.

  Tynan pushed his cup and saucer to the center of the table.

  “Should have recognized her, I suppose,” said Minogue. “But there’s so many of them these days.”

  “She was on a PR tour with Conor Lawlor. She’s just finished researching a series on the Guards for the papers. We’d been hoping it’d be a positive item.”

  “Is this the same Gemma O’Loughlin who let FIDO out?”

  Tynan looked away. Last year’s competition for schoolchildren to design and name a new Garda mascot had produced unintended results. Gemma O’Loughlin had ferreted out one of the more cynical Garda rank-and-file takes on what that mascot should be. New legislation and a cascade of regulations and guidelines for arrests, for ensuring the rights of an accused, had caused many Guards to throw their hands up. Fuck it, drive off had actually been put in print in the daily newspapers.

  “She’s adamant,” Tynan said then. “The tone, the general agreement among the Guards there. Vehemence, she described it as. Ferocity.”

  “Drink, John. Spoofing. Come on, now.”

  “And the bit with the gun?”

  “Fingers — no guns.”

  “She’s sticking to it. ‘Any citizen would reasonably conclude… et cetera.’ That Kilmartin meant the Guards had done it. At the very least condoned or approved it.”

  “Larry Smith?”

  “Larry Smith,” Tynan said.

  “Selling papers You know how they are.”

  “Jim doesn’t dispute saying it. I had a chat with him this morning.”

  “Off-duty,” Minogue tried again. He knew he didn’t sound convincing. “The Garda Club? Let off steam in? Have a few jars, bit of bad langu
age. Remember?”

  Tynan studied the crowd by the cash register.

  “Well now,” he said “What should The Larry Smith Solution mean to a citizen when she hears it from the senior Garda officer who was in theory responsible for the murder investigation of Larry Smith?”

  Minogue thought of the clips in the news a few weeks ago. Larry Smith’s brother Charlie, “The Knock,” jabbing his finger into the camera. The Guards wouldn’t get away with executing his brother in cold blood, they hadn’t heard the last of the Smiths by a long shot.

  “Listen, Matt. Let me be clear here. There’s no talk of chopping Jim. Much less asking him to fall on his sword.”

  “But there’s some class of hairshirt bit called for, I take it.”

  Tynan clasped and then released his fingers.

  “There’ll be a court injunction landing on her editor’s desk if he decides to leave her insinuation that we’re covering up anything in the Smith case.”

  “When do these articles come out?”

  “Well they’re not sure now. That’s their line anyway. She was doing a series: ‘The Changing of the Guard,’ or so we thought. Now they propose to open with this Larry Smith case. Want some previews? ‘Seriously disaffected’ ‘Malaise.’ ”

  Minogue sipped more coffee. He felt O’Leary’s eyes on him. “Listen to me now,” Tynan said. “Do I care a damn what Jim Kilmartin thinks, or doesn’t think, about the criminal justice system, juvenile offenders, the murder of a Dublin gangster, the prison system, or the price of eggs in a modern Europe?”

  He tapped his knuckles twice on the marble tabletop.

  “A little tact, that’s all. There’s enough talk about things being out of hand. Racketeers, drug barons.”

  Minogue sat back.

  “I didn’t hear what Jim said. So how could she? She was further away.”

  “You’re used to tuning him out when you want to. She heard enough.”

  Minogue watched Tynan shove crumbs from a scone to the edge of the table. He wondered if Tynan would drop any hint that he had engineered Kilmartin’s absence for three weeks. A right operator, was Kilmartin’s take on Tynan.