by John Brady
Minogue stole a glance at his partner.
“Says it’s haunted,” Malone went on. “Too long on the drip, says I, losing the head. No, says she Saw them.”
“Saw who?”
Malone parked next to a plumber’s van. He let his seat belt roll back slowly into its chamber, looked sideways at Minogue.
“Kids, she says. From the Starlight.”
Minogue tried to fix the year of the fire at the Starlight dance hall. He’d helped to direct the ambulances delivering the teenagers’ charred bodies. How often he’d thought of the dozens of ambulances grouped around the front of the then new hospital, their sirens off, their lights sweeping uselessly still. He remembered it being so terribly quiet. Then, when some of the parents and families began to show up -
He checked the phone again, stepped out after Malone. Wind and unreliable sun had dried much of the tarmacadam now. There were pools still in the shadows by the walls.
“Still no sign of a wallet,” Malone said. “Passport or the like, huh.”
“I’ll phone the lab again, I suppose.”
Malone scratched at his lip.
“Picked up a header, hitchhiking,” he said “Bang. Took everything. What do you think?”
“Keep it in mind,” said Minogue. “But why’s the car at the airport awhile?”
Malone held the door open for the inspector. Minogue paused, eyed Malone rolling his free shoulder. A boxer’s reflex as the bell went, he wondered. Was Malone so twitchy before every PM?
“Okay,” Malone said. “He meets another Yank on the road somewhere. He gives him — or her — a lift to the airport. This hitchhiker sees Shaughnessy’s loaded. Right? Shaughnessy’s a yapper, say, likes to spoof a bit. So he let’s things slip, about his da, et cetera. Moneybags, all that. Name dropping, see? He digs his own grave with his mouth. This hitchiker’s back in Reno or wherever the hell he came from. And we’re fu — we’re banjaxed.”
The hallway was busy. Minogue watched a man with papery skin pushing his own wheelchair ahead of himself. Two kids being walked quickly by their mother, flustered, annoyed, one of the kids with tear stains on his cheeks, the other one looking blankly around.
He slowed to take in the monument to the Starlight kids: THEY SHALL NEVER GROW OLD.
“Come on,” he said to Malone. “It’s gone eleven.”
An orderly stood by the window next to the lab offices eating a KitKat. Through a window Minogue spotted Pierce Donavan’s battered Land Rover. The state pathologist had brought it to every site since Minogue had started with the squad. Gerry Hanlon, Garda photographer, was reading the paper at a table. There were voices from the change room.
“Are we all aboard, Gerry?”
Hanlon closed the paper. A pathology assistant whom Minogue had once mistaken for a cleaner two years ago came in from the door behind them. The door to the change room opened.
“Ah, well now. The Clare connection, by God!”
Donavan’s greeting put Minogue in mind of a genial uncle, the sort of man who’d fart for the entertainment of children; a man who’d show kids how to make the best bows and arrows. A man who would always wave at trains.
The reserve that Donavan’s ebullience concealed was not widely known. A heavily armored introvert, he had married late to one of his students. She practiced as an obstetrician now. Minogue wondered what their dinner-table chat was like. A sometime insomniac who wrote poetry at night, Donavan had given Minogue one of his self-published volumes several years ago. It was after Minogue had become distraught during the autopsy of a child beaten to death by his mother’s fella. The mother had been out trying to borrow money to buy heroin.
Donavan had stopped the PM, sealed the room, bought a packet of fags. He had stood smoking with Minogue at the delivery door to the lab for a half an hour. Later he and Minogue had gone for a walk near his home in Howth. The inspector often recalled that cliff walk. The sun blinding them from the bay, the wind freshening as they rounded the outer edge of Howth Head. Minogue’s fury and despair and hatred had ebbed as if by magic then.
“Garda Malone,” said Donavan, “is it?”
“How’s it going.”
“You’re traveling in high society there, Garda Malone. Mind that boss of yours.”
“How’s the care at home, Pierce?” Minogue asked.
“Orla’s fifteen. She has a boyfriend with a ring in his eyebrow. You decide ”
“You want him to move it to his nose, is it?”
“She’ll do that handy enough, I’m thinking. Well: the both of ye in attendance for the American, is it?”
“I’m principal, Pierce. Tommy’ll be in and out.”
Donavan glanced at Malone before he headed back to the change room. Minogue heard him break into song.
“ Are you right there Michael are you right?
“ Do you think that we’ll get home before the night?”
Minogue shook his head and turned to Malone.
“Check on anything coming in on the squad lines, if you please, Tommy.”
“You don’t need me in on the, the thing here?”
“Later maybe. See if we can start a paper trail on his credit cards. He’s hardly traveling without any, now. Find out what the interviews are looking like at the airport. I’m a bit worried that we’ll need to be getting a lot of staff in a hurry.”
“I’ll tell Sheehy.”
Minogue stared at the pattern of the floor tiles again, the marks from wheels. Fergal Sheehy would hardly be at the airport yet. The site van and four forensic technicians were working the car park. Swords and Finglas stations had coughed up eight staff between them to keep up with interviews.
He looked up at Malone.
“We’ll be there by dinnertime, tell him. One or so. Tell him to push Fogarty. The security log books, thefts and break-ins at the airport. Any gang related especially. Allegations even. Bang heads if he has to, tell him. All the way up to Tynan.”
“Okay,” said Malone. “But let me ask you something. This Fogarty fella, the security chief there. He was shaping up kind of cagey last night. What do you think?”
“He was edgy all right.”
“He knew the patrols were bollocky,” Malone said. Minogue nodded.
“That’s on the menu to be sure,” he said. “But what’s the story on video at the airport?”
“It’s a bit dodgy yet,” replied Malone. “There’s surveillance indoors but…”
“While you’re at it,” Minogue said. “Phone Eimear at the lab and see what they’ve turned up from the car that we’d need to move on right away.”
Malone had his notebook out but he hadn’t written anything. He nodded as Hanlon and the assistant moved around him and entered the change room.
“I’ll see you inside then,” said Minogue. “Later on. No hurry.”
A second pathology assistant was putting on a plastic smock next to Donavan. Minogue slipped off his jacket, introduced himself, eyed the headline on the sports page left on a chair. His nose began to tickle, but the sneeze didn’t arrive.
“Tipperary always pull one out of the bag,” Donavan said. “The whores.”
Minogue felt his nose block, blotting out the stale, sweet smell he’d had with him since he entered the lab. A mercy, the timing.
“Well the Clare crowd let us down badly this year, I’d have to allow, Pierce. Maybe we should stick to the football for a few years.”
Donavan rearranged X rays in a folder.
“How are yours,” he murmured “Is it different when they’re grown?”
Minogue shrugged.
“Did I tell you I’m going to be a grandfather?”
“You did indeed mention it. Ye’re all fired up and ready?”
“We’ll have to get the clautheens out of the attic, I told Kathleen.”
Donavan clipped the X rays on the panel.
“How well you kept them,” he said. “Up beside your Communion money?”
Donavan had eye
brows like a damned haystack, Minogue decided. Hirsute, that was the word. Donavan waved at the X rays and tugged at his beard for several moments. Then he tapped one with his knuckles.
“There,” he said. “There’s sure to be brain damage. The skull is fractured here. And here. You can see actual bone fragments there. Look.”
A male, Minogue thought. Rage, strength. He tugged the cuffs further down on his wrists. Was the elastic tighter on these new ones? The assistants wheeled in the body from the cooler room. Hanlon placed spools of film on the bottom shelf of a cabinet over the sink and closed the door. One of the wheels on the trolley squeaked. It caught and spun and squeaked again.
“I’ll be wanting to see how many separate impressions we can see in that area,” said Donavan. “How many times he was hit.”
Minogue’s nose felt ticklish again. He heard the assistant grunt as he lifted the top end of the bag. He retrieved the clipboard and tested his Biro again.
The trolley was being pushed to the wall now. The white plastic bag lay like a pupa on the table. The decay had been slowed by confinement in the car, but the heat had bloated the body. The seal on the zip still reminded Minogue of a tag at a sale. He looked around at the shelves and the cabinets, the clock. The second hand crawling, stopping almost if you looked at it directly. Christ. Half-eleven. The sharp click of instruments being laid on the table seemed very loud. The squeak of Donavan’s crepe soles on the terrazzo slowed.
“Good,” Donavan said.
Minogue moved back to let Hanlon prepare for a set of photos. Donavan wheeled over a cabinet with four drawers. On top lay a clipboard with a schematic diagram of the body. Donavan had written “Patrick Shaughnessy.” Another clipboard had a sheet of graph paper topmost. Donavan eyed at the clock and scribbled the time on the graph paper. He nodded at the assistant.
“Cut the seal, Kevin. And thank you.”
Minogue listened to the high-pitched wirps of the flash recharging. Hanlon took seven, eight photos of the back of Shaughnessy’s head. He took the ruler from beside the head and replaced it with the others on the table. Donavan stood to the far side of the table. His eyes remained fixed on Shaughnessy’s neck.
“Good,” said Hanlon.
The assistants rolled the body over. Minogue glanced over at the tagged bags of Shaughnessy’s clothes in the corner. The long-sleeved polo shirt might even be a wool blend. The green khaki-style trousers and the jacket were outdoorsy, were they not. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Was it himself, he wondered, or had the light gone dim a little. Radio Na Gaeltachta continued to play faintly from an aged transistor radio jammed between specimen jars over the sinks. A subdued conversation with odd episodes of forced humor between the interviewer and his guest, a poet now deceased, gave way to a spirited tune on a concertina. Minogue concentrated on the meandering notes. Why did a concertina always sound like it was about to fly out of control.
“‘The Pigeon on the Gate,’” Donavan said. “Noel Hill?”
“None other,” said Minogue. “You’ll get honorary citizenship to Clare yet.”
He looked back at Shaughnessy’s swollen face The lividity always reminded him of a bruised apple. He watched Donavan’s hands. The pathologist’s commentary continued in a monotone. A habit, Minogue knew, because Donavan rarely used a tape. The deceased bled profusely from open wounds… A lividity pattern indicates he had lain in a position head below horizontal after the injuries were sustained…
Donavan turned to the clipboard and wrote 5+ beside the head on the schematic. Blood had clotted and glued Shaughnessy’s hair to a plastic shopping bag. Three hours at most to stop that blood flow in the open air, but probably longer in the tight, airless boot of the Escort. Minogue’s eyes slid out of focus. Hitchhiker, Malone had been speculating The new Galway Road had you across the River Shannon in little more than an hour. You could be in Galway in less than three. With Shaughnessy dead, the blood draining into the wheel well -
The sneeze surprised even Minogue.
“God between us and all harm,” said Donavan. He lifted the arms one by one, turned them and then began a detailed examination of the hands.
Hanlon stood waiting. His thumb tapped softly, slowly on the back of his camera. Donavan let down each hand in turn and he walked to the X ray panel. He stared at the X ray of Shaughnessy’s hands.
“Nothing there yet to indicate resistance,” he said.
He returned to the table and examined the left hand again.
“Nothing,” he said again. He glanced over at Minogue.
“He wasn’t expecting it, Matt.”
Minogue realized that he had been holding his breath. He had been imagining a conversation: a lonely stretch of road, raining maybe. Shaughnessy feeling sorry for some unfortunate hiker with his thumb out. A girl, maybe? The boot lid open to pack in a rucksack or to take one out: From Boston? Really? How about that? Sure, let me put that in the boot — the trunk — … Or getting out, most likely: the hitchhiker could even have picked that spot You can let me off here, I’ve got a better chance on an empty bit of road. Shaughnessy’s opening the lid of the boot, he’s reaching in. What was he hit with?
The squeak from the opening door was Malone. Donavan didn’t look up from the clipboard. Minogue moved to the sink. Malone eyed the body.
“We have a move,” he said. “Fella phoned in from the press. A photographer, says he took pictures at a do. He’s checking now but he’s almost sure Shaughnessy’s picture’s in the paper from ten days ago. A reception of some kind out in Goff’s, the horsey crowd out on the Naas Road.”
Goffs, thought Minogue. High glam: millionaires, film stars, sheiks and princes, pop tarts — any celebrity might show up at these world-renowned bloodstock auctions
“Name of Noel O’Hagan,” Malone said. “The photographer. He’s a freelancer. He says there were other newspaper fellas there too. It was a kind of a celebrity gig. There should be other pics somewhere handy.”
Malone looked over Minogue’s shoulder at Kevin, Donavan’s assistant, who was letting a stream of water play on the bloodstains by Shaughnessy’s ear.
“And the rented car,” Malone said. “Shaughnessy was number eleven to rent it. It’s a year old, the Escort.”
“What’s the story so far on the contents?” Minogue tried.
“I checked with Eimear again. They’ve inventoried the boot already. Very messed up. The bit of board over the spare wheel and that, well it’s broken. Like, something heavy had been dumped on it.”
“The weight of the body?”
Malone shrugged.
“Eimear says she doesn’t think so. There was something more compact, says she, but right heavy. And there’s a good-sized ding on the bottom of the car. Major, like. A bad road? That’s what left the hole under the boot, it looks like.”
“What’s the situation with prints, might I ask?”
“There’s a crew working through from the boot,” Malone replied. “They’re still at the inside of the car like. There’s no wallet yet. Passport, camera — nothing. There was a fair-sized bag of laundry. All man’s clothes. Guidebooks, maps, bits of stuff like biscuits, empty Coke cans. He smoked, or someone in the car smoked. Eimear says they see hairs coming from the carpet now too.”
“Are there good prints coming out?”
“Well yeah, as a matter of fact. A lot, even from the outside. They’ll start the comparison search on Shaughnessy’s this afternoon.”
Donavan was humming. Minogue tried again to pin the name of the tune.
“Ten renters before Shaughnessy,” he murmured.
“That’s the story so far,” said Malone “Yeah. And then there’d be cleaners, staff borrowing the cars out there.”
Minogue watched Donavan’s assistant wiping pieces of sponge on the body in a circular motion, dropping the pieces into a specimen bag hanging at the sides of the table — “The Moon Behind the Hill,” that was the tune. Donavan stopped humming. Minogue turned back toward the
pathologist.
Water still trickled from the hose at rest by Shaughnessy’s elbow. Donavan was finished the external? Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy would shortly be sawn and eviscerated.
The music gave way to a too-chatty presenter with a strong Ulster accent extolling the virtues of Clare music in general. An impertinence, Minogue decided.
Malone murmured by his shoulder now.
“Spots of blood from around the lid of the hatchback,” he said. “They’re in being typed.”
The click of more instruments being laid on the stainless steel brought Malone’s glance to the table. He bit his lip, looked back at Minogue.
“Clobbered in the open doorway, the boot, what do you think?”
“Well it looks like he didn’t react,” he said. “But there’s a spray pattern to sort out still, to be sure.”
“He knew the guy, then,” Malone went on “Or the fella ran up, got his first one in?”
The whirr always reminded Minogue of the dentist. Malone’s blink lasted too long. Minogue eyed at the saw that the assistant was readying. Donavan leaned over his clipboard, staring at the schematic of the back of the body.
“Say he’d been drinking,” said Malone. “Closing time, you know? After hours even. A session maybe, buying rounds of drink and all. All hail-fella-well-met until they’re outside. Say he’s been blathering away with the few jars on him. Money talk. Fellas go out with him. ‘Give us a lift there, will you… ’”
“Easy done, all right,” Minogue said.
Malone eyed the body for several moments.
“Well-to-do, you know,” he said. “Lots of stuff, like. The watch, the clothes. You know the Yanks, the way they are, the way they look. Maybe Shaughnessy’s pulling tenners out of his wallet all night. So it’s a local. I say we’re going to find two fellas, two drinking partners. They wait their chance, wallop him, follow through — maybe in a panic, or pissed — finish the job. Then they decide to hide the body back up in Dublin. Where it belongs, to their way of thinking?”
Minogue thought of the American tourists he’d first seen as a kid. He’d been mesmerized by the diver’s watches, those expanding metal watchbands, the tanned, hairy forearms. Perfume, the jaws always going on them. And now? He’d seen video cameras the size of paperbacks, outdoor gear and packsacks with pockets and straps for everything. Still the big, capped teeth, the ready smiles, the ponderous way a lot of them walked. All overweight? Swaggering? How they seemed to occupy that part of the path or the space where they stopped to look around.
