A Carra ring imm-6

by John Brady

  “‘Upgrading,’” said Sheehy. “‘Updating.’ ‘Long-term area’s not a priority zone.’”

  “It would be if there was a shagging car bomb parked there,” said Malone.

  Sheehy put up his hands. Minogue studied the map on the board again. He followed in his mind’s eye the access road in from the motorway.

  “So I think we’ll have to ask…” Sheehy was saying. Minogue scrambled to retrace the comments he’d been half-listening to.

  “To be sure, Fergal. I’ll phone myself and turn the wheel.”

  Promised the world, he thought seconding two detectives from Serious Crimes, short of staff or not, to go full-time on airport leads was little enough for Tynan to take. He looked at the blank TV screen. No phones ringing. The nine o’clock news would deliver?

  “‘Touring the west,’” said Minogue. “Where’d that one start?”

  “The girl at Emerald,” Murtagh said “She’s certain. He asked how long to Donegal. She advised going through Sligo and staying out of the North.”

  And he might well have taken her advice, Minogue thought. He’d push that over to Tynan too. The commissioner could decide for himself who’d put in the request for assistance from the Brits on border traffic. The phone rang.

  “Yes it is,” the detective said. He waved at the group by the boards. “Good. What’s her number?”

  “John,” said Minogue. “The one who thinks he was traveling with a woman. Did you get anything there?”

  “It’s the one in Sligo, Mrs. Rushe. I had a chat with her about four o’clock. She said that Shaughnessy showed up looking for a place. ‘Nice enough, American.’ Half an hour later, a woman shows up and signs in. ‘ Irish, well dressed.’ She had her own car, but Mrs. doesn’t know what kind. Signed in as Sheila Murphy. ‘Nice girl,’ midto late-thirties. Well spoken. It was only the next day Mrs. got the idea that the woman and Shaughnessy might be connected. Chatting at the breakfast, they were, says she.”

  “A color even?” Minogue tried. “The car, I mean?”

  “Nothing on that. I’ll have to try again.”

  “They left around the same time anyway,” said Murtagh.

  “Does Mrs. know who was sleeping where that night?” Minogue asked.

  “She doesn’t be inquiring, she says. As long as there’s no messing going on.”

  B amp; Bs in rural Ireland not checking for wedding rings or the like? Now there was progress, Minogue reflected. He’d tell Leyne that too, if he was asked.

  Murtagh nodded at the computer screen.

  “There’s no Sheila Murphy in the crime box,” he said. “Social Welfare has thirty-seven Sheila Murphys. Twenty-something of them could match the age.”

  “Any description of this woman to go on, John?”

  “‘Refined’ ‘Casual, but well turned out.’ She thought Dublin first, but says she heard a country accent under it. Very fair hair, stylish do. A pageboy kind of cut, Mrs. said, the way you see it in the magazines. Jeans though. An over-the-shoulder class of bag was all Mrs. saw. Paid cash.”

  “She went out later on in the evening?”

  “She did. So did Shaughnessy. Mrs. heard one of them coming in about twelve. Only one, she thought, but then she heard some whispering. She didn’t check who went where.”

  “A one-night stand?” asked Malone. “Did you ask her about the sheets?”

  Minogue leafed through the photos again. He lifted out the one taken at the opening of the art exhibition. The woman’s back was to the camera. You could only see from her shoulders up. Her hair was blond.

  “A hairdo like that, maybe?”

  Murtagh sat back.

  “I suppose I’ll be looking out for it.”

  One of the detectives handed an information slip to Murtagh.

  “Call in from Donegal, a garage in Gweedore. A fella thinks he sold petrol to Shaughnessy awhile back. He doesn’t remember any red car. He’s going to go back into the books and see.”

  “Follow it,” said Minogue. “Get a statement out of him. The day’s the first thing we need — and if there was a woman in the car too.”

  The phone rang again while Murtagh was plotting a route on the map with the end of his Biro and guessing the times it took to drive without stops. Minogue watched Brophy writing up the information form. The other line rang.

  “A bit of life now,” said Sheehy. “Maybe we’ll get the jump yet.”

  Minogue wrenched his gaze away from Brophy’s Biro. The biscuits has done in his appetite. He wondered about soup. He should phone Kathleen and let her know he’d be late. As if she didn’t know. He was getting a headache. The phones had gone silent again. He didn’t want to go checking in with Tynan.

  Eilis was signing for an envelope from a courier when he stepped out into the squad room. Murtagh had taken the package already and had opened the flap. Photos slid out. Contact sheet, seven or eight 8 x 10s with yellow stickies on them.

  Murtagh laid them out on his desk.

  “These are the indies your man contacted for us.”

  It was Sheehy who spotted her first. Minogue looked at the tag.

  “That’s the same gig,” said Murtagh. “The art exhibit. Look: Shaughnessy there next to her. Give us the other one there — see the hair, the collar. That’s her.”

  “Here she is again,” said Sheehy. He pointed to a group standing in front of a blown-up shot with fields and stones stretching to the horizon.

  “Not the one with the belly and the dickey bow,” said Malone. “The Humpty Dumpty looking fella.”

  Murtagh had pulled off the tag.

  “That’s some European Commission somebody. And that’s her, according to this guy, O’Toole. Aoife Hartnett. The Humpty Dumpty fella there is Sean Garland. Dr. Garland, a big one in the museum. The opening of some exhibition at the National Museum. The… C-a-r-r-a? Carra Fields, it looks like.”

  “O’Toole,” said Minogue. “The photographer? Have we a phone number for him there?”

  Murtagh scribbled on a notepad and slid it whole across to Minogue.

  “Casual enough there,” Malone murmured. “Shaughnessy I mean.”

  Minogue studied the group again. Murtagh read out the list of names Turloch O’Toole had written on the tag Museum staff, a member of the European Commission with a French name. Some smiler from Mayo County Council, another one from Bord Failte. The daughter of the schoolmaster who’d stumbled across the site. Minogue let his eyes rest on the photo for several moments. He turned to Malone.

  “Portugal, huh,” said Malone.

  Murtagh slid a file folder out from under the photos, took out two pages stapled together, and laid it on the table.

  “There’s a copy of that statement from Garland there. It’s an approximate about Shaughnessy’s visit, when he showed up — as Patrick Leyne, mind you. There’s staff phone numbers and extensions there. Her address is Terenure somewhere. It’s on the search we sent to Aer Lingus to see what flight she took.”

  Minogue couldn’t make out much of the other pictures in the backdrop behind the group. There was a piece of a diagram with back spots and some pattern, half of the title visible: The Carra Fields, a Stone Age enclosure of 3,000 acres that was causing people to rewrite all the history books. Was it Kathleen who’d mentioned them awhile ago? Kilmartin?

  “John,” he called out. “Can we get ahold of Garland this time of the day?”

  Murtagh was halfway through a bag of cheese and onion crisps. He looked around for something to wipe the grease off his fingers before he plucked at the file.

  CHAPTER 9

  The voice was shrill, querulous. Seventies at least, Minogue guessed. Rambling probably, was Mrs. Garland.

  “Who is it again?” she demanded. “A Guard?”

  The piping, haughty tone was sweetened with what he believed must be a Cork, a dignified Cork, accent.

  “Minogue, ma’am. I’m an inspector in the Guards.”

  “Minogue? Clare, sure where else. You’re a C
orofin Minogue now, are you?”

  “Further west, ma’am. Where might your son be?”

  “You must be some class of a fish then. Or a seal maybe.”

  “Above Ballyvaughan, I — ”

  “- There’s nothing above Ballyvaughan. Except for stones. Clouds maybe.”

  “And well I know it, ma’am, from trying to coax — ”

  “You’re not trying to cod me, now, are you?”

  “Not a bit of it. Is your son expected home soon?”

  “There was a Dan Minogue in Foreign Affairs. Are you one of his maybe?”

  A headache had dulled his thinking, gutted most of his patience.

  “We’re better known as the Murder Squad. But for now I’m merely — ”

  “Murder? What murder? Is Sean all right?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Of course he is. It’s a different matter entirely.”

  “Well God in heaven, man, you put the heart crossways in me!”

  “I didn’t have the chance — ”

  “All you had to do was open your mouth, sure.”

  “I really need to talk to Sean, ma’am. Could I trouble you to direct me to him, as promptly now as I can ask, without giving offense.”

  “He must be a cousin then,” she said. “Dan. Very direct but always civil. The nicest man you could meet. Oh, charm the birds off the trees. A real favorite with the lassies, so he was. This was during the Emergency of course.”

  Minogue let out the deep breath he had been holding. He slouched in the chair and surveyed the squad room. His eyes settled on the newspaper article about Iseult.

  “ DeValera, God be too good to him,” she went on, “he put a lot on Dan’s shoulders. Churchill summoned him to Downing Street in ’41. Our neutrality was an act of war to the likes of Churchill. Of course he hated anything Irish — hated it. Dev knew he’d picked the right man in Dan, of course: with the charm came the iron. Oh I can tell you it was not business as usual for Mr. Churchill that morning!”

  “When would he be expected home?”

  “ ‘Mr. Churchill,’ says Dan, with that lovely soft Clare accent, ‘Mr. Churchill. We feel for the plight of your people and the free peoples of Europe. We know what it is to lose our freedom, so we need ask no lessons in tyranny or freedom from you’ — ”

  “Mrs. Garland, I have to ask you again if you would put me in touch with your son as soon as — ”

  “‘Understand that we too have beaches, Mr. Prime Minister.’ And as if that wasn’t enough, he looks the old bulldog in the eye, without batting an eyelid: ‘Speaking for my own family, Mr. Prime Minister, I am from the west of Ireland. My uncle was shot dead in 1920 by Black and Tans. He was a farmer with fifteen acres. Now, with all the might and force you could muster to invade my country, you would still have to cross the Shannon to the west of Ireland. And there’ — ”

  “Indeed, ma’am. I — ”

  “Whist, will you! ‘And there,’ says Dan, ‘there you’d meet me and my family’ Never entered the minutes, needless to say Churchill almost threw a decanter at him, so he did. Oul toper, God forgive him. Hated Ireland, always. You’d be proud to claim relation with the likes of Dan Minogue! A huge funeral… ”

  “I must commend you on your memory.”

  “Hah,” she scoffed. “Patronizing a woman of fourscore years. I worked for Dev for thirty years. Now, that was long before the corner boys and counter jumpers insinuated themselves, you’ll understand. Long before the sloothering and shuttling off to Brussels and Strasbourg and the like, olagoning for grants and favors and handouts. Begging to be let sit with the fat boys over there, with their shiny suits and their sleek — ”

  “Mrs Garland, please I don’t want to waste the resources of the Gardai sending out Guards to find him.”

  Mrs. Garland said nothing. Minogue listened harder to the rustling sounds.

  “Hello?”

  “Don’t be interrupting me! I’m checking his appointments here.”

  Minogue looked across at Murtagh. He was on hold on another call. He grinned wearily and shook his head. He heard Mrs. Garland whisper, pages turning.

  “Now… Here we are. Yesterday was… Wait… What kind of people are we?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Set-aside, do you know about that?”

  “I do, ma’am.”

  “Do you now. We have farmers paid by the paper boys in Brussels not to grow anything. And a lot of them spray the fields to prove they can’t put in a crop there so’s they’ll get the grants. Poison, man — rank poison! Can you credit that? With everything we have, someone in Brussels tells Irish farmers to set aside land, a thing we fought and died for — even to poison it — and we do it? Sure land means nothing anymore. What have we turned into, answer me that. With the year of our lord two thousand bearing down on us… We might as well call ourselves a new name. Euroworms or something. Is that the way to start the next thousand years, is it?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Here we are now. Sean is at one of his regular things. They go to a restaurant below the back of Merrion Street there. Do you like Gilbert and Sullivan?”

  “Which place, ma’am?”

  “L’Avenue.”

  “He’s at a function there is it?”

  “He’s eating his dinner there. They go off to a pub afterward. Tuohy’s. Do you know Tuohy’s’ Do you know what they did to it?”

  An ex-football player had lavished a million and something pounds to disassemble a country pub and reassemble it, board by board, in the middle of Dublin. Minogue gave her no chance to start in on it.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Garland. I do. Here’s a number for me if I should miss him. If he phones, would you be kind and tell him that I’m leaving this minute to find him, ma’am?”

  Minogue threw more water on his face. Still his eyeballs ached. He studied the droplets falling from his nose into the sink. The sneezing hadn’t yet proved a cold was here. Maybe it was working its way express and stealthily to his chest though.

  Malone was waiting for him by the door. He had phoned L’Avenue, gotten to speak to Garland. Garland had told him he’d wait for them there. He nodded at Murtagh hunched over his desk.

  “John’s gotten ahold of the sister. The Hartnett woman’s, like.”

  Minogue took an extension and listened. Fiona Nolan was close to hysterical. Murtagh asked if she could give the key to a Guard and they’d let themselves in. Caught between panic and suspicion, Fiona Nolan said she’d have to discuss it with her hubbie.

  Murtagh kicked off against the desk. He rolled no more than a foot.

  “She’s freaking out, boss,” he whispered.

  “Get her husband to bring the key then.”

  “See what she — Yes. Mr. Nolan? Yes Garda John Murtagh, attached to the Technical Bureau.”

  Nolan asked if there was an investigation in which his sister-in-law figured. Murtagh rolled his eyes, gave Minogue a look and pointed at the phone. “Can’t,” Minogue mouthed. He put down the extension. He heard Murtagh begin to explain to Nolan as he headed for the door.

  Malone took Thomas Street. He drove directly through the Coombe to Kevin Street where they met with the last of rush hour. He said L’Avenue several times, trying out different inflections each time.

  “It’s oo, Tommy. Not jew ”

  “Lava-noo.”

  “You’re close ”

  “Doesn’t sound right. Sounds like Lava Noo. Who learned you your French anyhow?”

  “Nobody. I picked it up.”

  “Garland’s gay, I betcha.”

  “Why?”

  “He lives with his ma.”

  “You were living at home until not too long ago.”

  “That’s different. That was on account of the brother.”

  Minogue answered Murtagh’s call as Malone drew up in front of the laneway. He eyed the painted sign for L’Avenue high up on the wall.

  Nolan, the brother-in-law, was willing to let them into Aoife Hartnett’s
place, but only in an hour.

  “What,” said Minogue. “After he’s been through it?”

  “I suppose,” said Murtagh.

  “Tell him to smarten up, John. We’re not across from one another in court.”

  “I leveled with him. He’s worried. He’ll come around quick enough.”

  Malone turned into the laneway. There was an interior design place, a cake shop with a Russian-sounding name, an architect’s office that looked like some of Daithi’s Legos from twenty years gone by.

  “There’s nowhere to park,” said Malone. “I’ll park back out by the bank.” L’Avenue was half full. There were skylights, vines that looked real, wrought iron dividers. Garland was sitting with two men and a woman. One of the men looked familiar. He had the guarded expression of someone who’s well known. Minogue couldn’t place him.

  “I’ll come quietly,” Garland said.

  Minogue managed a brief smile in return. The size of the head on this fella, he thought. And why did he remind him of a pigeon? The giant’s head, the ruddy face over swelling wattles, and a spotted bow tie stole Minogue’s attention for several moments. On the end of his short arms were fingers like sausages. Minogue made an effort to keep his eyes on Garland’s face.

  The others at the table returned the inspector’s nod. The woman smiled. Garland grasped his jacket. He eyed the inspector.

  “God, your timing is perfect. Inspector?”

  “Matt.”

  “A close call entirely. — Colm here was about to extort more wine from us.”

  Garland must have told them there’d be a Guard coming to call. Glamorous, no doubt, a whiff of danger, something to tell their cronies about.

  “Oh yes,” Garland went on. “He was getting ready to explain the subtexts in A Rebel Hand.”

  That’s who the Colm was’ Colm Tierney, newspaper columnist, prognosticator. Minogue’s nose began to tickle. He searched his coat pocket for hankies but he couldn’t find any.

  He knew the surge of irritation wasn’t just from having a cold coming on. There was something about these people here that annoyed him. Crank he was, and prejudiced. He knew it, and he felt badly about it, but he knew that wouldn’t alter much of his impressions later.