A Carra King

by John Brady

  “I can’t be running around the city like an iijit. Tell him that, will you.”

  O’Leary said nothing. Minogue stared at a flattened Coke can in the grass.

  “All right, Tony. Where’s himself at the moment anyway?”

  “He’s caught up with a task force on criminal assets.”

  Minogue rather liked the indignation warming his throat and chest.

  “But he’ll definitely be out for the press conference though,” O’Leary said. “It can double for your public appeal, if you’re having one.”

  “I’ll see him there then. And I have a shopping list.”

  “Say the word.”

  “Fergal Sheehy’s going to need a dozen officers to get started in earnest. He has five there with him now. Forensic’s still working the site so the van’s staying put. I’ll call you in about fifteen minutes and give you a list.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Minogue thumbed the End button twice. Absolutely? He watched the airport buildings rise slowly above the hedges as Malone braked for the roundabout.

  “Go on in, Tommy. I need to look around. The security office first.”

  Malone waited until they had stepped out of the car to ask him.

  “What’s O’Leary want?”

  “Céad míle fáilte for our American friends, Tommy. Lucky I have the spare tin whistle in the boot.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am. Can you sing ‘Danny Boy’?”

  “Bollocks! I get Sergeant out of this. Just for agreeing to be here.”

  Minogue stepped in front of his colleague. He gave him a hard look.

  “All right so. No more playing to the gallery, Tommy. I’m a lot more annoyed than you are. You’ll be staying with Fergal at the airport. I’ll go back into town with the VIPs and head a press conference afterwards.”

  Malone’s grimace was almost too much for Minogue.

  “Just drive. And don’t be making faces at me.”

  Fergal Sheehy was perched on the edge of a table littered with printouts and maps of the airport. He nodded at Minogue, returned to squinting at the map. Minogue took off his jacket. The coffee stain was still there. That bucket-arsed shopper with the five hundred shopping bags after the Christmas sales had ambushed him in Bewleys.

  “I’ve been looking,” Sheehy said. “There’s holes all over the place.”

  “The schedules?”

  “The whole thing. Sure, they have video at the terminals but — here, have you been into the monitoring room yet?”

  “No.”

  “There’s three areas basically: indoors, approaches to the terminal — that’s the one they pay the most attention to for drive-ups and vehicle bombs. Then there’s a camera over the main entry for traffic flow. That’s it. There’s plans and all the rest of it to get full coverage by the end of next year.”

  Sheehy pushed himself up off the table. He nodded down at the maps.

  “That car park’s blind. So there.”

  Minogue slipped his jacket back on.

  “Fergal. I have to sit in on some class of a briefing with the mother and father when they land. Then I’m off to town again. Press conference and appeal.”

  “Well that’s very nice for you. Who have I got here?”

  “Tommy. I’ll put in the call for staff in a minute.”

  “When do you want the pow-wow?”

  “Aim for seven.”

  Minogue headed down the hallway that led to the public areas of the terminal. There were five security officers waiting in chairs in the hallway. He took the stairs down to a door that opened onto the Arrivals. He looked up at the screens but then remembered Leyne had his own plane. He counted: seven hours flying, more maybe. Plus five, for the time change. Leyne and the ex-wife had left Boston four in the morning their time.

  He spotted Declan King talking to a ruddy-faced man in a navy suit. King made his way over.

  “Matt?”

  “Good day to you now, Declan.”

  “Kieran Hayes. He works out of CDU.”

  Minogue didn’t fight back much against the clamp Hayes issued as a handshake. He took in the ruddy complexion, the well-tended hair, the heavy jaw. “Works out of” meant nothing: Hayes was a cowboy. Minogue wondered if members of the new mob had been given protective duties too.

  The latest incarnation of Emergency Response was called the Cobra Squad. Minogue had heard “take down” and “Cobra” in the same sentence at a session in Ryan’s pub a few months back. At first he’d thought they were talking about a film. Someone had told him that this Cobra Squad was to be the latest hammer for paramilitary gangs in the South.

  Hayes raised his eyebrows, excused himself. Minogue watched him thread his way through the line-ups. He began to pick out the other detectives stationed around the building.

  King kept looking around the Arrivals hall.

  “You’re up and running on this?”

  Minogue looked at him.

  “I’m only asking because you can expect Leyne to,” King said. “Do you know him, or of him?”

  “He’s some class of a tycoon. That much I know.”

  “Very direct. Down to earth. He’ll — oh, here we go now.”

  Hayes was pointing to a door marked No Entry. Minogue followed King. At the end of a short corridor the Inspector found himself in a carpeted room a little smaller than the squad room. In lieu of real windows were two stained glass panels full of detailed Celtic ornaments. An exit sign hung over the door to the left. An olive carpet, puffy-looking leather sofas, indirect lighting and low tables.

  One of the detectives, a skinny, greying fella with the look of a fox about his profile gave Minogue the nod. Minogue couldn’t remember the name, but he was almost certain that it was the same one who had been front and centre in an infamous Irish Times photo of a demonstrator being given a hiding at a Euro summit in Dublin several years ago. Minogue eyed the stained glass and the panelling.

  A door opened behind him. The man who came through was a lift from a movie or a magazine, an American magazine. The eyes flicked around the room, he turned, said hi to King and left again. Minogue perched on the back of a sofa. King tugged at his jacket, checked his watch.

  “He has a tendency to take over,” King said with what might have been a smile. “He may get in your face.”

  The door opened again and drew in the stink of cooking and engine oil and rubber. Customs Officer, looking very pleased with himself. Minogue couldn’t remember seeing one spruced up to such splendour before. There followed a short, broad-shouldered man, plodding more than walking into the VIP reception area. It’s the Pope, was Minogue’s first thought. He almost said as much. Startled, he stared at the lined forehead, the stoop, the jutting jaw. The remains of curly white hair fell halfway down over his ears. Even from across the room Minogue could see the membrane of dried spittle in the corners of Leyne’s mouth.

  Behind Leyne, and nearly a head taller, came a woman with rust-coloured hair, a pale complexion and red-rimmed, blue eyes. The cut of the maroon trouser suit Minogue had glimpsed in fashion magazines, but the face was from a winter’s day walk on a country road in the west of Ireland. Forty-eight, he remembered from the paper, and she didn’t take the sunglasses route, it seemed.

  A bulky, well-groomed man in his forties followed. He hesitated, his briefcase held tight by his leg, and then stood to Leyne’s right. Principal handler/flunky, Minogue decided. He wondered how many more Leyne had brought with him.

  He looked over again. The multimillionaire hadn’t grown an inch since he’d last looked. The head like a boulder or the like, so out of proportion to the frame. Now she wasn’t much short of six feet, he decided. These were Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy’s parents, he thought as he stepped forward, and half-wondered where his annoyance had disappeared to: Mrs. Geraldine Shaughnessy and her former husband, Mr. John Leyne. The long and the short of it.

  The Mercedes soaked up the motorway with a faint whistle. Minog
ue glanced back at the cars following. Mrs. Shaughnessy had insisted on being shown the site where her son’s rented car had been found. Minogue remembered her jaw quivering, the handkerchief held to her nose. Leyne had stood beside her, pushing back long strands of hair teased up by the breeze. He’d studied the car park with a bleak gaze for a long time. Minogue wondered if the bored disbelief on Leyne’s face was just the shock, or was it from something else that had occurred to him quicker. The look of a tradesman, maybe, surveying an impossible job.

  Leyne turned to him. Minogue didn’t want to look at the man’s mouth, the yellow film stretching around his mouth like a fish or something. There was a sour smell in the car, too, that Minogue didn’t want to be aware of any more.

  “So,” Leyne said. “Tell me, what’s really going on here?”

  Minogue focused on the driver’s eyes in the mirror of the unmarked Opel ahead. Mrs. Shaughnessy was talking to Declan King there, with Kieran Hayes looking around the front passenger headrest, glancing at the Mercedes every now and then.

  Freeman, Leyne’s assistant, was sitting in the passenger seat, chewing slowly on something. Minogue’s gaze went to the driver. The car was Billy O’Riordan’s, the driver an ex-Guard, apparently.

  “Well,” said Leyne.

  The Irish accent seemed to have soaked through the twang Minogue had heard at the airport. Freeman sat forward a little and turned.

  “If this was back home, you’d think robbery,” he said. “A mugging, maybe.”

  “That’s definitely a line of enquiry,” Minogue managed.

  “Look,” said Leyne. “Let us know where we stand.”

  Minogue gave him a blank look.

  “You’re the expert, right,” he said. “Tri . . . Tan . . .”

  “Commissioner Tynan,” said Freeman.

  “That’s him. He says you’re the goods. But what else would he say? Now look, we need to get to the point here. You can speak your mind, you understand?”

  “I’ve told you what we know so far,” Minogue said. “There’s nothing to embellish. We’re going after leads the best we can. That’s about it so far.”

  Freeman adjusted his glasses again. He started to say something, but Leyne waved him off.

  “Look, there, Inspector, is it?”

  “Matt’s grand.”

  “Matt. You can appreciate where we’re coming from. How we talk, the way things work. You know. The States? Have you been?”

  “No. Not yet. But I have a rough idea.”

  “Well, I’ve been both sides. I watched the Yanks getting off the tourist buses, Christ, I don’t know when — Eisenhower, that’s how long ago. Looking for fairies and leprechauns, the half of them. All I’m saying is, level with me. I’m not going to give you shit. Hell, I’m in no position to. You’re not Dublin are you?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “Clare. West Clare.”

  “Family?”

  “Two.”

  “Grown up, are they?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “How long are you married?”

  Minogue looked out the window.

  “Sixty-seven years,” he said.

  The driver’s eyes locked onto his in his mirror. Freeman stopped his chewing and looked at the dashboard.

  “So it’s your first marriage then, I take it.”

  Minogue nodded. Freeman resumed his chewing.

  “They told you how much of a pain in the ass I am?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “How’m I doing?”

  Minogue looked across at him. Leyne’s eyes were more watery than he’d noticed earlier. The jaw was set even harder. There were blood vessels right up to the iris.

  “You’re doing all right so far.”

  “Only all right?”

  “The shock hits people differently, Mr. Leyne.”

  “Ever had someone close to you murdered? Die suddenly?”

  Minogue looked around the face. The skin was papery near the eyes too.

  “I don’t mind you poking,” he said. “But when I do, I’ll tell you. I’ve a job to do, that’s all.”

  Leyne turned back to the window. A sagging van belched clouds of diesel smoke.

  “You’re a gentleman to spare Geraldine,” he said. “But I’d like to know. What’s your gut instinct?”

  Minogue looked through the back window. The security squad would be jumpy if the traffic slowed any more.

  “I can’t say. Your son was out of sight for quite a number of days. We’re trying to place him.”

  Leyne closed his eyes, let his head back against the headrest. He rubbed at his eyes and sighed. The driver pulled around the slowing traffic by Collins Avenue. He was directed through the junction by two Guards on motorcycles. Three kids waved at the cars. The Mercedes picked up speed again.

  “Jeff,” Leyne said then and opened his eyes. “Are we connected?” Freeman took a cell phone from his briefcase.

  “It’s Billy O’Riordan I want.”

  Freeman consulted an address book, he dialed, and he listened for a moment. He handed it to Leyne.

  The potato millionaire eased himself into the corner. His eyes lost focus.

  “Billy? It’s John,” he said. “Yes. Thanks. Christ, I don’t know. About twenty minutes ago.”

  Minogue eyed Freeman taking in Summerhill. Not that appetizing an entry to Dublin’s Fair City even with the boom times. Freeman leaned into him.

  “Definitely in shock,” he whispered.

  Minogue returned Freeman’s gaze. Concerned, sure, but hired concern?

  “We left Boston at four,” Freeman added. “Didn’t sleep much . . .”

  Minogue glanced at Leyne. He was pinching the bridge of his nose while he listened. His eyelids fluttered but they stayed closed.

  “It’s not personal,” Freeman whispered. “You can appreciate that, right? He’s used to running the show his way.”

  “Damn it, Billy,” Leyne said then. “The hell would I know?”

  An old man, Minogue realized. The suit and the tan and the darting eyes twitching and floating in the pouches of skin didn’t make him any less than sixty-eight years old.

  The Mercedes was waved through red lights by the bridge. Freeman spoke behind his hand now.

  “Mr. Leyne’s never forgotten his home country.”

  Leyne said all right and handed the phone back to Freeman. He looked out at the new offices by the quays.

  “Did Jeff give you more of the hard ass and soft heart routine there?”

  Freeman sat back with a rueful smile.

  “He better have,” Leyne went on. “That’s what he’s paid to do. Here, see that pub?”

  Minogue took in the newly tarted-up pub as they passed.

  “I worked there for six months on the buildings,” Leyne said. “Years and years ago. Carrying concrete blocks up to a black-haired bastard, a brickie. Jimmy Morrissey, from Leitrim. I had a row with him one night. The size of me, huh. He beat the shit out of me. A great education, he gave me that day.”

  He nodded at Freeman.

  “But Jeff here came up the veal route. Didn’t you, Jeff?”

  Freeman smiled.

  “Summer house on the Cape. Aspen, Jeff?”

  “Aspen,” said Freeman. “Yes, sir. Worked two seasons in a pizza joint there.”

  Leyne tapped on the window.

  “That bastard Morrissey did me a big favour. I went home to those ten acres and got started on learning everything I could about chips. Potato chips. People thought I was mad. I got a job in Mitchelstown. Two jobs.”

  “Crisps we call them here,” said Minogue. “Chips you get out of a chipper.”

  Leyne strained to look back at a passing building.

  “I hate Dublin,” he said. “Still. And I shouldn’t, should I? Things have come on a lot here, haven’t they?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Film industry, the music? Gone mad on the digital
economy and all that?”

  The car turned sharply around Merrion Row. The trees seemed to be drooping very low over the railings in the square.

  “You have a garden, I hope.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you grow spuds?”

  Minogue thought ahead to Kathleen’s disbelief when he’d tell her tonight.

  “I do.”

  “You don’t care that you can get them dirt cheap from Cyprus?”

  “No.”

  It wasn’t scorn Minogue heard in Leyne’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “It’s in the genes, is it? Since the Famine?”

  “There’s no way to know.”

  Leyne cleared his throat. Freeman looked at him and then at Minogue.

  “What would anyone know about that any more,” Leyne murmured. “There’s only microchips or television or something. Video games. Stores — shops. Who cares. There’s no past any more. History’s over, isn’t that it?”

  “My great-grandmother was the only one left,” said Minogue. “Out of nine. A Quaker family in Galway took her in.”

  Leyne made to say something but he stopped. Minogue watched the back gates of the Dáil swing open to admit a car. Too many damned Mercedes in Boomtown Dublin now this last while. He returned Leyne’s gaze.

  “The man she married had buried seven brothers and sisters,” he said.

  “Enough left to take on the landlords though? And then the Black and Tans.”

  “I suppose. I’ve a brother keeps score, over the centuries.”

  Leyne sighed.

  “British Queens, my da used to grow,” he said. “Duke of Yorks. The Kerr’s Pinks. Idaho Reds . . . Sir Walter Raleigh and the glorious spud. Rotting in the fields. People dying in ditches. But I’m no scholar. No. I’m too busy working for a living. I pay people to study something, and then I pay them again to explain it to me. I must be mad.”

  Two Garda motorcycles blocked the traffic at the lights by Baggot Street. The Mercedes surged ahead. One circuit of Stephen’s Green and they’d pull up at the Shelbourne. Minogue looked at the Opel ahead. What was there in Geraldine Shaughnessy’s manner, her appearance, that he’d recognized but couldn’t detail as he’d watched her standing in the airport car park by the tape. A teacher maybe, a nun?