A Carra King

by John Brady

  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 favour,” said Tynan. “That cup of something in Mary Street. Upstairs by the window?”

  Bewleys, Minogue gathered.

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

  Minogue scratched a loose fibre on the knee of his pyjamas.

  “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 in Talbot Street. O’Leary had crossed a line within the force.

  Tynan pushed his cup and saucer to the centre 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 language. 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 Face of the Gardai,’ 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.

  “So,” Tynan went on. “You’re acting CO now. You may receive inquiries from the media. That’s why we’re having a chat here. There are people who might let things slip by accident on purpose, if you take my meaning.”

  Kilmartin had left bruises in his wake on investigations, Minogue knew.

  “There could be inadvertent remarks,” said Tynan, “internal or external to the Squad. Remarks tha
t could be construed as lending credence to any innuendo leaking out of this article, this series.”

  Tynan’s eyebrows crept up.

  “Translation: watch your back. And watch who you say what to.”

  “Why did Lawlor guest Gemma O’Loughlin into the Garda Club?”

  Tynan’s eyes stayed on his for a moment. His jaw moved from side to side.

  “Ask me a hard question, why don’t you. The idea was to allow her a glimpse of hard-working men and women relaxing off duty. The chat, the jokes. Good-natured, decent Garda officers. Sure, it was PR. But now we have her telling the public that the Murder Squad doesn’t know the difference between overseeing and overlooking things in the investigation of the murder of a criminal.”

  “Come on, John. The place is lousy with gossip. Always. She knows that.”

  “Do you hear me arguing? The Larry Smith case is still open, isn’t it?”

  “The Smiths would love to stick it to the Guards.”

  “Sure,” said Tynan. “But do you think that there are people who believe or want to believe that a death squad murdered Larry Smith because the law couldn’t get enough of him?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Wrong answer. You’re not a tabloid man. So you’re not up on this.”

  “You’ll get someone to plea bargain,” Minogue said. “Wait and see. Sooner or later we’ll have some gouger sitting waiting on his lift to court and he’ll decide to sell us whoever killed Smith.”

  “But there’s been no movement in the case, is there,” said Tynan. “Flat, right?”

  “Well, Intelligence summaries float in every week. But there haven’t been any fresh leads for months now.”

  “Jim’s still trying to ram the file back in the letter box of Serious Crimes?”

  “Sorry. We’ve tried. Can’t touch them. Get the RUC on it.”

  “Paramilitaries down from Belfast still?”

  “We’d still be going for that, yes. A contract, maybe. Drugs in it somewhere.”

  Tynan licked his fingertip, picked up a crumb from his plate and examined it. A cell phone chirped at the far side of the restaurant. Minogue watched O’Leary slip a phone out of his jacket, pluck out the antenna and turn away.

  “So,” said Tynan. “We can expect more of those damned posters going up all over town.” He glanced up and saw that Minogue didn’t get it.

  “No,” he added, “not the Citizens Against Drug Dealers ones. The phony ones that Smiths got up.”

  Right, Minogue remembered. No one had discovered for sure who had paid for the ones that had appeared weeks after the Smith killing — Wanted for Murder of Lawrence Smith, Husband and Father: The State and the Garda Síochána. He, like others, had put it down to some kind of bitter retort by Smith’s family or cronies. Smith himself, Smith the pusher and ringleader, had appeared on CADD posters as wanted for murder by causing overdoses and even several suicides.

  “Enough of that,” said Tynan. “Last night, the airport. The American.”

  Minogue thought back to the wind whipping at the nylon tarp over the car.

  “He was beaten to death, John,” he said. “Left in the boot of a car he rented.”

  “How long is he dead?”

  “A couple of days anyway. He might have been still alive when he was dumped in the boot.”

  Tynan was watching O’Leary now. The Sergeant pushed down the antenna and nodded at the Commissioner. Tynan looked at his watch.

  “Was that our ten o’clock?”

  O’Leary nodded. Tynan looked back at Minogue.

  “Tell me again, Matt. Sorry.”

  “He was badly done about the head. I didn’t spot signs of a scrap yet.”

  “Two or three days you’re thinking?”

  “Probably,” Minogue said. “It was there the whole time, I’d imagine,” he went on. “There was a dent, and a break in the seal under the spare tire. I’d bet the car was driven hard somewhere. Hit a rock sticking up in a boreen or a rock flying up under it maybe.”

  “Why only yesterday evening then?”

  “Derek Mitchell had his eyes open, if you’re asking. Security. He’s new.”

  Tynan stared at the sugar bowl.

  “Is this because he was an American, John?”

  Tynan glanced up and then resumed his study of the sugar lumps.

  “Well, he was booked into Jury’s for Saturday night,” said Minogue. “His ticket out was for Monday. Missing Persons told me the nearest they had was a stay in a bed and breakfast in Sligo on the Wednesday. The C65 went out a week yesterday.”

  Tynan settled his cup on his saucer and turned the spoon to face Minogue.

  “I’d be expecting better after we do a press release.”

  “All right,” said Tynan. “You’ll need to know this. I had three calls from the States about Shaughnessy. One of these calls was from the State Department. Shaughnessy’s family was distressed to learn that he had not returned on schedule to the U.S. One call from our Minister of Justice.”

  “We’re going as fast as we can. We phoned him in as probable just after we secured the car last night — ”

  “— Let me finish now. The second call was from the American Ambassador.”

  Tynan gazed at Minogue.

  “And he expressed his thanks in anticipation of our keen efforts in the matter.”

  This was what unsettled Kilmartin the most, Minogue thought: Tynan’s faculty of transparent irony. Kilmartin took it to be sarcasm.

  “Thanks in advance,” said Minogue. “That’s always nice. A sort of a bonus.”

  Tynan’s eyes wandered the tabletop now.

  “So Shaughnessy’s family were alarmed then,” Minogue tried.

  “His father had an associate here in Ireland phone us. That associate told me Shaughnessy’s people were concerned — well before the missed plane.”

  Minogue sat back.

  “That associate is Billy O’Riordan. Hotelier, horseman and bon vivant.”

  Minogue recalled newspaper photos of a broadly smiling, chubby man holding the bridles of winning horses, cutting ribbons for new buildings. Shaking hands with public figures, Cancer Society, visiting sheiks, stud farms, helicopter rides to remote islands: the whole bit.

  “He’d had calls from Shaughnessy’s mother too. She divorced the father twenty years ago. She had custody afterwards. She’d been trying to get in touch with the son but couldn’t. O’Riordan wanted to help in any way he could.”

  More offers of help, thought Minogue. Wasn’t that great.

  “I hear you. What I mean is ‘we here in the Squad hear you.’”

  Tynan folded his arms.

  “You know who Shaughnessy’s father is?”

  “A Mr. Shaughnessy. Shaw-nessy.”

  Tynan shook his head.

  “The mother went back to her maiden name. Something to do with the fact she got an annulment.”

  “That’s the Pope saying you were never really married, as I recall.”

  “That’s it. The son came with her and he had his name changed to hers.”

  “At her wish, or the son’s?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tynan. But she used to be Leyne. Yes, your case. Well, his father is John Leyne.”

  Minogue’s wandering thoughts, his cresting irritation disappeared. “Well now I know,” he managed.

  “Leyne’s Foods,” Tynan said. “As in probably billionaire by now. Irish emigrant makes good. Boston.”

  Minogue stared at the patterns in the stained glass window.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “We’ll be in the spotlight.”

  Tynan nodded.

  “Amicable,” Minogue muttered. “Is that the word they use for a good divorce?”

  Tynan paused before answering.

  “‘Happy families are all the same . . .’”

  “‘Are all alike,’ you mean,” Minogue said.

  Tynan almost smiled.

  “You mucker,” he said. “And you from God-kn
ows-where, the back of beyond in West Clare. Go after a bit of promotion, can’t you.”

  Minogue was surprised at how fast his irritation returned.

  “Leave me alone to do my job.”

  “Is that about Leyne?”

  “That too. He’ll take a number, like anyone else.”

  “Did I suggest differently?”

  “Well don’t poke me about promotion either. I don’t want to end up like Lawlor.”

  Minogue tried to remember if he’d seen a photo of Leyne recently in the papers. Some acquisition or other, a takeover. As tough as any of the homegrown billionaires over there. He looked back at Tynan. The Commissioner’s eyes had glazed a little.

  “Here you are quoting Chekhov — ”

  “— Tolstoy . . . And I didn’t quote him. It was you started it.”

  “But you know it, don’t you,” said Tynan. “The follow-up too probably.”

  “‘Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’”

  “Well, thanks,” said Tynan. “Chances are, I wouldn’t be hearing second-hand about your damn views from the bar of the Garda Club spouting off about who had a hand in the fate of a washed-up criminal warlord, or capital punishment, would I, now?”

  Minogue looked down into his cup. No divinations from milky coffee froth.

  “James uses the term to refer to his long service as a hardworking Garda officer in the city of Dublin.”

  Tynan pursed his lips.

  “I’ll remember that,” he said. “Another thing about our friend Shaughnessy, or Leyne. O’Riordan left broad enough hints. ‘Some acrimony,’ he says. The mother kept young Shaughnessy away from the dad for a few years earlier on.”

  Sudden sunlight flooded through the windows, caught glass and dazzled Minogue. His sneeze erupted with barely a moment’s warning. He opened his eyes to see O’Leary watching him fumbling for a hanky.

  “No effort spared,” said Tynan. “All resources necessary.”

  Minogue wiped his nose slowly. No effort spared. A tycoon’s son. Sounded like a messed-up son. He crumpled the hanky into a ball and placed it on the saucer. No: a waitress shouldn’t have to deal with that. He dropped it into his pocket.

  “When’s the PM?” Tynan asked.

  “Early afternoon, I believe. Pierce Donavan freed himself up.”

  “You’ll attend?”