A Carra ring imm-6

by John Brady

  Someone shouted Tynan’s name from the small crowd around his car. Tynan paused to answer a question. O’Leary shifted in his seat.

  “A right mess,” he murmured. “Are you okay?”

  “Not so great, Tony. Thanks. A mess is right.”

  “You should have heard the boss,” O’Leary said, “when he found out what they’d done. Declan King and them. Never heard the like of it before. Ructions.”

  Outside, Tynan broke away away from two reporters. O’Leary started the engine. Tynan sat in and pulled the door hard behind him. Minogue winced when the flash went off by the window. Tynan half-turned.

  “The both of you could be going off for a bit of observation, you know,” he said. He looked at Minogue. “Especially you. Haven’t you blood pressure or something?”

  “I’ll be all right. For now.”

  “Have you phoned Kathleen yet?”

  “No. I will in a little while.”

  Tynan took out a notebook.

  “Really, now,” he muttered and he crossed something out. “Do you think a small Jameson would help the proceedings here?”

  “Only if there was a pint to go with it,” said Minogue.

  Tynan closed the book with a snap

  “Go to Quinn’s,” he said. “They have a snug there.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Tynan put down the envelope. He laid the sheets on top of it.

  “So that’s it,” he said. “There’s nothing here about Leyne’s response to the son’s phone call.”

  Minogue studied the countertop by his glass. The light coming through the whiskey fanned golden on the wood. He eyed Tynan.

  “Leyne collects things, doesn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Minogue had to wrench his eyes off the play of the light.

  “What I mean is that the son was here to get this damned stone and smuggle it back to Leyne, John. To get back in his good books. To get his name in the will.”

  Tynan poured water into his empty glass. Further down the bar two old men had engaged the barman in a discussion about farmers. It was a poor enough pretense at not eavesdropping, Minogue decided.

  “That’s a fair take,” said Tynan. “The son mentions that this stone had been verified by an expert.”

  “This ‘expert’ being Aoife Hartnett,” Minogue said.

  Minogue became distracted again by Malone’s hands. He hadn’t let up rubbing them, squeezing them until it seemed the knuckles would burst through the skin. O’Leary’s phone went off. He listened, nodded, and ended the call.

  “No sign of those fellas yet,” he said to Tynan.

  “Not even the car?”

  O’Leary shook his head. Tynan turned back to Minogue.

  “Well I don’t see the son telling him over the phone that he’s killed someone,” he said. “There’s no point. It’d poison things for him entirely. Yes?”

  Minogue shivered. The whiskey was working against him now.

  “I just don’t know,” he managed. “Panicking?”

  “Does it sound like panic to you?” Tynan asked. “Not to me. The gist of the conversation is the son telling him this stone is a genuine find, this Carra stone. That no one knows it’s been turned up, so no one’s going to miss it. And on he goes into the some story about it.”

  Tynan waited for Minogue to look his way.

  “It’s also clear to me from this flimsy statement that Leyne has doubts about the whole thing anyway,” he said. “It’s what he doesn’t put in the affidavit is what’s got me wondering.”

  Minogue thought about Eileen Brogan crying. Garland biting his lip as he tried to explain the leave of absence he’d pushed Aoife Hartnett into. He saw Dermot Higgins pointing and clicking, heard his distracted murmurs, the pictures dissolving and sliding off the screen. He rubbed his eyes. It didn’t help: his thoughts were slipping away.

  “Okay,” he tried “The call is made ‘just outside Dublin.’ The son is in a hurry. Has he a means of getting this stone out of the country at this point, a plan? Contacts? We don’t know ”

  Tynan shifted on his stool. Wanted to get going, Minogue registered.

  “You read up on this Carra place, didn’t you?” Tynan asked. “What about this stone anyway? Is there such an item?”

  “Legend says there is. Or there was.”

  “It’s never been found though?”

  Minogue missed with his glass as he was returning it to the table. It tipped, rolled, and fell on the floor, intact. Tynan lifted his feet to place them away from the spilled whiskey. Minogue reached down and brought up the glass. He fixed Tynan with a glance.

  “Okay, let me throw in a question now,” he said. “Declan King was at the airport to meet Leyne. So was Hayes. What did they know, how much, and how early?”

  “King reports to the minister, not me. Hayes, I’ll be getting to.”

  “They colluded in keeping information from us. What’s your view on that?”

  Tynan began to stack the coins on the counter. He placed the last coin, a five-penny on the top He looked up suddenly at O’Leary.

  “Tony. You and himself here give us a bit of room, will you. ”

  O’Leary waited for Malone to rise. Tynan watched the door of the snug being pulled tight.

  “Listen here, Matt. No more noises for now, about Hayes working behind your back. King, I can’t do anything about.”

  “I had two connected murders on my hands,” Minogue said. “Three, now.”

  “You don’t. The squad does. You’re off the case, for now.”

  “We’ve been led. Now we’re being shoved aside. And Leyne or his fixers are papering over the cracks all the time. ”

  “Leyne’s in a coma. He has brain damage.”

  “He knew something was up. He’s been throwing bones to us. The private-eye stuff on the son, now the affidavit — but I say he knew all along.”

  “He had his own interests,” said Tynan

  “Two hundred million of them, is that it? Is that what concerns the likes of Hayes and King? Or you?”

  “Did Freeman tell you that?”

  “No. I asked him about the will and he got into a dander.”

  “Well you’d just arrested him, driven around the streets, growling at him.”

  “Why did Leyne have a lawyer with him? He was expecting the worst.”

  Tynan lifted the coins in groups from the stack and began dropping them back on the stack.

  “Two hundred million, I heard,” said Minogue. “Am I wrong?”

  Tynan released the coins and rubbed his hands.

  “It’s not two hundred million,” he said. “It’s fifty. It’s part of what he’s worth.”

  He looked up from his palm at Minogue.

  “Leyne made contact with people in the last government,” he said. “He had a proposal, to donate fifty million dollars to the development of Irish culture. It was to go into history, heritage centers. Like the Carnegie libraries years ago.”

  Heritage, Minogue thought. He watched Tynan examining his palms.

  “Let me guess,” he said then. “There’s a deal involved. An amnesty for stuff Leyne had, stuff he’d bought that was smuggled out of Ireland? Goddamn it, John, we give amnesties to tax dodgers and drug barons here every day, so why not Leyne?”

  Tynan let the seconds pass.

  “That was the deal until the son got himself jammed in the works,” he said then. “Leyne would never have to divulge who or where or how these pieces ended up in his possession. And that the fifty million would be very welcome, thank you very much.”

  “Hush money,” Minogue said “A half-step up from extortion.”

  “Look at the results,” said Tynan. “A lot of money for heritage here, recovering missing — stolen — artifacts too. Call it restitution if you like. That would be a good day’s work. Yes?”

  Anything you want, Minogue was thinking, the hand grasping his arm.

  “I think that Leyne actually tried to
make me an offer,” he said. “Except that I was too thick to get it.”

  “For all your work, you’re still a bit of a gom, I’m afraid.”

  Minogue gave him a hard look.

  “Well here’s how I see it then,” he began. “Or does it matter, at this stage?”

  “It matters. Fire away.”

  “King was in touch with Freeman on a regular basis. King would be doing the trick-bicyclist routine, the deal maker with the delicate stuff. Hayes, maybe the gofer to shadow Leyne or Freeman while they’re here. Fits, doesn’t it? Except that Aoife Hartnett is murdered. And Shaughnessy himself.”

  Tynan turned on him.

  “Listen,” he said to Minogue. “The clock has moved on. You have to come in now. The case proceeds, but you need to step aside for a while at least.”

  “Why? Because now Freeman’s been murdered? Because we weren’t shown the menu? Because we crashed the party?”

  “Among other reasons, because the minister has requested it.”

  Minogue put down his glass. He studied Tynan’s face.

  “John,” he said. “Wait a minute here now. You bought me a cup of coffee the other day. A nice cup of Bewleys white coffee. You asked about Jim dirtying his bib at the club. Fair enough, I thought. It’s wise to be on guard with this newspaper article, the Smiths stirring up trouble again. And Gemma O’Loughlin is out to sell papers. And then you talked about Shaughnessy, how you want to be in the know every day. Still fair enough, I said to myself again: a visitor, tourist, well-known family, profile — whatever. It has to be done right. Fine and well ”

  Minogue paused to get Tynan’s eyes back from a study of the glass.

  “But today, out of the blue, there’s a murder. It’s a well-planned murder. How well planned? They knew there were Guards there, and maybe even that the Guards might be armed. But they were determined enough, desperate enough… or maybe they were so well paid, so afraid of failure, that they followed through anyway. ”

  He leaned forward. He could feel the muscles at the back of his neck quivering now, his head beginning to shake.

  “There’s part of me knows that those two fellas were only after Freeman, John. The poor iijit panicked and ran for it. That’s when they got him.”

  Tynan nodded once and looked down at the floor.

  “Now they were nothing to the Smiths, John, were they?”

  Tynan raised his eyebrows.

  “I say they were there for Freeman. ”

  Tynan picked up the coins again.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me here,” Minogue said. “And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to find out myself. If you won’t let me at King or Hayes, I’ll go after them myself.”

  Tynan let the coins drop into his other hand. His voice was soft when he spoke now.

  “The last person who spoke to me like that was an assistant commissioner,” he said. “Was, I say Now he hadn’t been threatened, or shot at, like you have. So you’re going to make it. For now. We’ll let that last remark go by.”

  “The suits went around you,” Minogue said. “But they’re not going around my case. We have three murders, they’re related, and I’m not going away. A bunch of robbed antiques and fifty million notwithstanding.”

  Tynan let the coins slide over one another in his palm. Minogue wondered if O’Leary and Malone could hear him on the other side of the partition. Tynan glanced up from his palm.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “It’s not just the money. Or even these, what can we call them — artifacts — he says he’s going to give back ‘to the Irish people.’”

  The commissioner looked at the distorted glass in the partition of the snug. That head could only be Malone’s, Minogue decided.

  “You talked with Leyne, didn’t you?”

  “In the car,” replied Minogue “At the press conference, a bit.”

  “Well, did you ever hear him hold forth on the state of the nation here?”

  “A short, sour few words, yes. He was still back in the fifties. I kind of switched off.”

  “You remember 1969, Derry?”

  Minogue searched Tynan’s face for a clue.

  “What about it?”

  “The riots in the Bogside, when everything was going up? How it looked from here? Nights of burning houses, riots, and petrol bombs? Remember?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “The B Specials and the RUC? The black outfits, like storm troopers?”

  “What’s this…?”

  “You remember we were considering sending in the army, over the border into Derry?”

  “Yes, there was talk — ”

  “Talk?” said Tynan. “You know well there was more than that.”

  “Why are you bringing this…”

  He left the question unfinished. He stared at the commissioner. Tynan looked and sounded as though he was reminiscing about a clumsy prank as a schoolboy. Minogue knew the expression, the tone to be signs of a quiet fury.

  “Where is this coming from?” he tried.

  “Didn’t I tell you I had a chat with the Minister of Justice this morning?”

  “Wait,” said Minogue, “I’m not on board here. First I’m thinking smuggling, then pay-off so Leyne can get his shot at immortality here, then cover-up for his son, but now…?”

  “I had several questions to ask of the minister,” said Tynan. “At least the conversation ended on a civil note. Can I get back to this history lesson now?”

  Minogue nodded.

  “The North, the sieges around Catholic areas, the barricades. The arms that we didn’t officially notice being sent into the North from here.”

  “Leyne was part of that?”

  Tynan looked at the empty Seven-Up O’Leary had drunk.

  “NORAID, the Americans — that was the start of that,” he said. “There was big money involved. You got caught in the tail end of a bit of the worst yourself.”

  For a moment Minogue was back at the border that night, his legs beginning to give out as he tried to reach a car already rolling into the ditch, the bullets still slamming into it.

  “What are you saying here?”

  Tynan opened the snug door and asked O’Leary to phone a Hogan, tell him he’d call later. Through the doorway Minogue eyed a customer, an elderly man with a gaunt face and a long tongue, which he kept flicking around his lips as he hauled himself onto a stool. The knuckles were misplaced, jammed together. Tynan closed the door again.

  “We heard a rumor a few years ago,” he resumed, “that Leyne had been involved back then. Yes — the self-made entrepreneur still with the politics of a Republican. It surfaced when he made his approach about giving back these artifacts, and donating all the money. He’s no stranger to donations, by the way, I learned: do you want to know how many millions he’s given to the Democrats over the past decade? Anyway, that was before the IRA went shopping in Moscow and Libya, and doing their deals with the other slime in Amsterdam and Prague and the rest of it.”

  Tynan gave Minogue a quick survey.

  “Even before the business phase kicked in,” he resumed, “with the robberies and the rackets and the drug trade. He believed, or he wanted to believe, that the IRA was the same IRA as had fought Black and Tans. Remember where he came from, Matt: small farmer, pushed around here. He walked away when the politics went way left. That’s history now.”

  “History,” said Minogue. “But plenty stayed in, people that Leyne would know still, then?”

  Tynan looked at his watch.

  “Probably,” he said.

  “What if the son knew that, had a name…? Or what if he’d told the father some of what he’d done here and Leyne pulled out some old contacts here to get the son out of the mess?”

  He tried to arrange his thoughts but they kept going sideways on him.

  “The son, Shaughnessy…” he began. “He was trouble, that we can tell. Would he have put the heavy word on people here, how he could spill the beans on som
ething from way in the past, so’s they’d have to help unglue him from whatever he was up to here?”

  Tynan nodded slowly. Minogue didn’t know whether he was agreeing with him or just placating him.

  “More to the point,” Minogue went on, “if Leyne began to suspect that his contacts here had gotten fed up fast with demands the son was making in his name and then gotten rid of Shaughnessy, maybe even Aoife Hartnett because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time… Leyne might put them to the wall too?”

  Tynan didn’t nod again. He had resumed fiddling with the coins.

  “Freeman had access to Leyne,” Minogue resumed. “Even to his will: maybe Leyne might have let slip what was on his mind to him. So Freeman would be an unknown quantity here if people thought he could pass on something to the Guards.”

  Minogue let his words drop away. The soreness in his knee came back to him.

  “So that’s where your case goes off the map,” Tynan said then. “This is not just about smuggled stuff from old churches and graveyards down the country.”

  “Shaughnessy, he lit the fuse, didn’t he?”

  “Could be,” said Tynan. “But those gunmen today were part of something a damn sight bigger than you and your partner, and even your squad, can handle alone.”

  “This is a squad case first and foremost,” Minogue said. “We can’t sit on our hands at the door here.”

  Tynan eyed him.

  “Seems like you have inherited Kilmartin’s selective hearing here,” he said “Safety’s number one: get through this, what just happened. And you can’t have an edge after this. You’re also going to have to take stock of the situation at home, get a break after this. Kathleen?”

  “I’ll handle that. But we can’t walk away from this though.”

  “There’s no disgrace,” said Tynan, his voice rising slightly. “We messed up because we were kept blind. You did the best job possible. Stand down for now, let me get Intelligence in with some of the old hands on the paramilitaries, going back to whenever. This won’t be buried any more.”

  “We’re okay, Tommy and me,” Minogue said. “We have to keep a hand in, or we could lose momentum here, could bury the case even. It’s asking too much to walk at this stage. ”