A Carra King

by John Brady

  “Larry Smith, Jim.”

  Minogue stared at his notebook while he waited.

  “What about him? What’s your question exactly?”

  “Just wondering, that’s all. You were the conductor on it.”

  “Well, I had to be, didn’t I? It was hot from day one. It had to be done right. I took it because there’d need to be high-level consult. . . . Wait a minute. What are you saying? What do you want?”

  “Is there even a remote chance . . .?”

  “Well, Jesus. That’s how the damage gets done, isn’t it? Not by direct inquiry, oh no, never that way. It’s the slow way, the innuendo, the bloody gossip eating away like an acid at the thing until finally — you’re actually asking me? You who worked on it with me, you who sat in on all those briefings with Serious Crimes and those gunslingers, those bloody headers from C2? You can’t be serious. No way.”

  “Just asking.”

  “You already said that! ‘Just asking’ my arse. See? She’s gotten to you even!”

  Minogue wondered if Leyne’s Foods was the first of the frozen foods which had shown up in the supermarkets years ago. American Style Frozen Foods.

  “Look,” Kilmartin said. “It was one or other of a pack from Belfast, I’m telling you. Devlin or Harte — they’re known hit-men who take contracts. You know we can’t get them on this. Come on now — you spent two days at the site with me, didn’t you? There was nothing. Are you forgetting? The dum-dums were down to bloody bottle caps by the time they went through him. Don’t you remember? Is it her, the widow, what’s her name? Or is it the brother, what’s his name, Charlie, rabble-rousing for an inquiry? He’s an iijit, but he’s sly. The fucker. But they’re all like that.”

  “Neither, Jim. No. Look, mind yourself over there now.”

  The rueful tone in Kilmartin’s voice then didn’t surprise Minogue.

  “Hah,” Kilmartin said. “The FBI. We could show them a thing or two, couldn’t we? I’m telling you, we could. The cases where the crime lab is between your ears, hah? The Yanks . . . don’t talk to me.”

  Minogue thought of the cocked thumb last night, Kilmartin’s squint as he aimed: Smih’ goh’ hih’.

  “You’re telling me,” he managed.

  He ended the call, eyed the duration. The State could pay the airtime on that one. He had kept the newspaper clipping from last week’s newspaper, the preview for the forthcoming series on the Guards. He took it out of the drawer. “The Changing of the Guard”: a bit glib really. But that was good journalism, wasn’t it. “The Old Guard” later on: well, there was something noble and steadfast about that. Holding fast against a tide of criminality. Plain and simple stuff, no guff and cant. He slipped the pages back into the drawer and stared at the phone. No he wouldn’t phone Kathleen right now. He sat back, tried to plan his next hour. Couldn’t.

  Larry Smith and Company, limited. The simple fact of the matter was that Larry Smith had played cowboys and he wound up in the middle of a road in Baldoyle with bits of him all over the tarmacadam. Hollow-point bullets, brutal. James Kilmartin, a senior Garda officer no less, and no more frustrated than ninety-nine percent of the Gardai, had been caught off-guard voicing his satisfaction outloud. So. In the heel of the reel, who cared about how the streets of Dublin had been cleaned of at least one serious, lifelong gouger. A vicious little bastard in his own right, incurable.

  He eyed the page on Iseult again before folding it and slipping it into his pocket. He headed out into the squad room proper. Murtagh had already entered the times on the board. The credit card trail, he thought. Receipts from the States cleared in about a week now. Éilis was copying the file.

  The green light from the photocopier flared and died by the corners of the cover, but some escaped to run across Éilis’s neck. He returned her blank gaze for several moments. What was bothering her?

  “Emerald Rent-A-Car?” he tried.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  Minogue tried to map the days and places but he was soon stuck.

  “This museum thing, John, if he says he’s Leyne. What’s going on there?”

  “Maybe to get the royal treatment researching the forebears and all that,” Murtagh said. “The lig in, the ‘influence.’ Researching the forebears and all that? Instead of lining up like Joe Soap at the genealogy office.”

  “Garland,” Minogue said. “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Wait a minute. He’s got a fancy job title as I remember.”

  Murtagh fingered his notebook. He looked up with a faint smile.

  “‘Keeper of Irish Antiquities.’”

  “I thought that was Maura Kilmartin,” from Éilis. Minogue gave her the eye.

  “Garland does lectures too, so he does,” said Murtagh. “Public lectures on history. The Golden Age. Monks and what have you. How we civilized Europe.”

  Minogue searched Murtagh’s face for irony.

  “Anyway,” Murtagh went on. “Shaughnessy’s in Jury’s Hotel until the Monday. He picks up the car at Emerald, down off O’Connell Street. He makes sure he’s booked back into Jury’s for the weekend, starting Friday. Plane’s out on Monday. He’s planned five days of touring then.”

  Murtagh rapped the board with his knuckles.

  “If Donegal is good, then Shaughnessy’s there on Tuesday. Say he’s on the road most of Monday. Donegal town’s six hours driving anyway.”

  “What if he went through the North, but . . .?”

  Minogue rubbed at his eyes. He heard cracking sounds from somewhere near his sinuses. If this cold went to his chest he’d be shagged for a fortnight.

  “Her Majesty’s would give us time and place on this, John. Without much sloothering around the issue, I mean. It’s not political.”

  Murtagh scrutinized the map.

  “Might have gone through Strabane.” He tugged at his lip. “Up to . . .”

  “Letterkenny,” said Minogue, “and points north. Derry maybe.”

  He squinted at the timetable again.

  “Who exactly filed the C65 to Missing Persons anyway?”

  Murtagh capped his marker. Éilis answered the phone.

  “I don’t know yet. But there were the calls from the States. And Billy O’Riordan.”

  “All right so,” said Minogue. “Find out exactly, will you?”

  Éilis was holding the phone up when he opened his eyes again. Three sneezes this time. His nose felt like a burst football.

  “Fergal Sheehy,” she said. “He’s on. Needs the money, says he. Will you brief him now or do you want him to stop by on the way to the airport?”

  FIVE

  Malone turned the Nissan into Beaumont hospital. autopsy was set for eleven.

  “How many’s this for you?” he asked Minogue.

  “This’ll be thirty-seven.”

  Malone cleared his throat again. He yanked the ticket from the parking robot thing and drove through as the boom lifted.

  Minogue hated this hospital. Unreasonable, he knew, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that all this space here made it too quiet. Easy for him, was Kathleen’s take on this. He hadn’t been jammed into Mercer’s Hospital or Jervis Street in the middle of a Dublin summer for a bloody delivery, had he?

  “The ma got her knees done here,” Malone said. “Lovely place, says she. But glad to get out early all the same.”

  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 dancehall. 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 still sweeping uselessly. 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 armoured introvert, he had married late to one of his students. She practised 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 travelling 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 travelling 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 dinner time, 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 eyebrows 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 farther 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 sp
un 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 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 humour 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?