A Carra King

by John Brady

  That wasn’t the plan, Minogue wanted to say.

  Minogue watched a feeble, fussy granny enter the airport restaurant on the arm of a hungover-looking man in an ill-fitting suit. Not the emigrant Paddys of old, he thought, with the string around the suitcase at the dock for the night sailing.

  “Want to bet Coughlan or other fellas have a chip on the shoulder,” Malone said. “And they want to drop their boss for something?”

  Minogue shrugged.

  “There are no direct pointers yet,” said Sheehy. “The patrols all log in the checkpoints, but sure they might as well be sleepwalking, some of ’em.”

  “How are we for response from people who parked there over the week?” Minogue asked. He looked down at his scribbles. “Five people so far, is it?”

  Sheehy nodded. Malone looked at his watch.

  “Half-four,” he said. “There’s only six or seven security staff left to do.”

  Minogue looked down at the personnel lists and the companies under contract.

  “Is this it, Fergal? The whole shebang?”

  “There’s a few missing,” Sheehy said. “But they’ll come through.”

  “All right. What’s the story on the vicinity search?”

  Malone said that the dumpsters were still being checked. They’d located the tip where the terminal rubbish was disposed of.

  Minogue thought of a rubbish tip, flocks of seagulls circling and squabbling. He’d better go down to the site, close it up. The technicians had come up dry. They’d worked it all morning. He checked his watch.

  “Let’s head down to the security office,” he said. “We’ll deal out what we have.”

  He turned to Sheehy.

  “We’ll aim for half-seven. At the squad, if you please, Fergal. Run up summaries, like a good man, and smarten us up on where we’re headed with leads from here anyway.”

  Eoin Gormley, one of the newest forensic technicians, and Paddy Tuttle, probably the longest serving, were in the site van.

  “Well, men,” Minogue said. “We’ll give it the once-over again.”

  Tuttle talked to Gormley about cigarette butts on their way across the access road to the car park. Minogue’s bad shoulder ached worse. He thought about his brother’s gnarled hands, how he could hardly walk down the lane on the farm now.

  The tarmac in the car park looked soft. There were clumps of moss like sponge by the cement bollards. The Guard on shift was leaning against an unmarked car. Minogue studied the space within the tape, the holes where the tarmac had been taken up.

  “A right lot of rain we’ve had,” said the Guard. Soil samples, the contents of the boot, Minogue was thinking: that comb under the seat. The odometer said Shaughnessy had gone nearly 1400 kilometres. He stared at the stripped section of tar by the back of the Escort.

  “Anything definite to tell us he was attacked here?”

  Tuttle tugged at his ear.

  “Do you want the considered version or the man-in-a-hurry version?”

  “Whichever you like, now Paddy. No miracles expected.”

  “That’s where the back bumper was, see? The ‘B’?”

  Minogue looked along the chalk line.

  “We ’scoped and scrubbed for blood all up and down there before we took that patch up. The rain would’ve carried it off fair enough, but there are plenty of crevices in the tar that’d hold it. Minute though, very minute. It’d be degraded there fast too. Acidy. The compounds in there, well . . .”

  “Tires, shoes?”

  “There’s residue all over the place,” said Tuttle. “But you’ll never distinguish them. That’s going nowhere. We measured under where the wheels were. There’s a difference all right but that’s good for nothing, time-wise.”

  “Cars parked there before, you’re going to tell me,” Minogue murmured. “And will do so again?”

  “I measured just a half an hour ago after to compare,” Tuttle went on. “Sure the damn stuff comes back up again. Spongy. The time of day. A bit of sun . . .”

  “Paddy. The site: I know you’re not a betting man now.”

  Tuttle looked away toward the terminal. The sky had brown tints.

  “Sorry, Matt. I couldn’t really.”

  “‘Forensic Science wouldn’t support it’?”

  Tuttle nodded.

  “Eoin?”

  “Ditto. You’d be reading tea leaves.”

  “It’s in the car you’ll get anything here,” said Tuttle.

  Minogue tugged at the tape. Emerald Rent-A-Car had an option to leave their car at the airport but Shaughnessy hadn’t taken it. Had he changed his mind, or had whoever driven the car thought they could lose it for a while? Some bloody scut, he thought again, a hitchhiker, travelling on Shaughnessy’s credit cards. Match the entry to the exit from the Aer Lingus passenger lists: point of entry passport controls from the ferries. But if they’d come through the North he’d have the U.K. control data to reckon with.

  Tuttle asked him again.

  “Sorry, Paddy. Yes. Thanks. The car, yes, we have that, to be sure.”

  The Guard helped them take down the tape and fold the uprights.

  Inspector Minogue was getting to know the Swords Road a bit too well. He thought of the trips back from the airport each time they’d brought his son and de facto daughter-in-law out for their flight back. Kathleen silent, her crying done. Daithi pale, himself bewildered. The trips were getting spread out now. There had been three trips in four years — a trend — and Daithi wasn’t sure about this Christmas either. Wasn’t sure, quote unquote. The job was intense. It was the price you paid for the fast track. If he’s not coming home at least once a year, well . . . Kathleen had started the sentence often but had never finished it.

  A low-slung sports car with a laughing driver and a woman pushing back her long hair rocketed by only to brake sharply as a taxi passed a van at a leisurely fifty miles an hour. Malone kept trying to see the driver.

  “Jases,” said Malone. “That’s what’s his name. Isn’t it?”

  Minogue looked over. A Porsche, by God, and a turbo at that.

  “It looks like him all right.”

  “Yeah, I knew it was. The film fella. A Rebel Hand. What’s his name?”

  Malone gave the Inspector a sly look.

  “Fannon. Gary Fannon.”

  “Will I flash the badge? Have a go at him for the driving?”

  Minogue studied the gestures of Ireland’s enfant terrible director while he waited for the taxi to move out of the fast lane. Who was the girl?

  “He was doing ninety,” Malone said. “Seen him bombing along in the mirror. Eighty anyhow.”

  “Ah, leave him alone.”

  “Why? Are you hoping to stay the good side of him? Get hired?”

  “He’s a cultural icon, Tommy.”

  “Icon? Is that the same as a fucking chancer?”

  He stood on the brakes in time to leave six inches or so between their Nissan and the van ahead.

  “Shit — sorry. What’s he like, Leyne?”

  Minogue waved him back to watching the road.

  “The son and him weren’t that close, right?”

  “He wants to help,” Minogue said. She was a singer, the girl, wasn’t she? What was her name? “He told me he’ll back me up. Anything I want.”

  “Me too?”

  “No. Only me. You’re from Dublin. But I’m a countryman.”

  “Fu —. That’s not very nice, is it?”

  “Dublin’s a kip, Tommy. Mr. Leyne so pronounced it. Sorry, but.”

  Malone squirmed in his seat and tapped the steering wheel.

  “Anything you want, is that the story?”

  “Correct,” replied Minogue. “So that’s two anythings now. One from Tynan, one from Leyne.”

  Malone shifted again.

  “You mind me asking you something there? The Killer’s always gotten under Tynan’s skin, right? And vice-versa, like. Right?”

  Ryeh, Minogue heard. Loike.r />
  “Cause yours truly runs the shop with a shagging hammer in one hand,” said Malone. “We’re the elite and all that. His style, right?”

  “He has his ways.”

  “Yeah, yeah. What I’m trying to say is, well . . . Tynan and you are on, ah, good terms. So Tynan’d be happy if, well, you know what I’m saying.”

  The Porsche had attracted a lot of attention ahead. Malone raced the Nissan in first.

  “I know this Shaughnessy’s high profile,” he went on, “so we’re in the spotlight? But, like, Tynan’s got to be happy the way you-know-who is off in the States. Specially the timing, right . . .? And with the Larry Smith thing hanging . . .?”

  The Porsche headed up Griffith Avenue. Going to the Gravediggers by Glasnevin, Minogue decided. He’d heard from Iseult that was where visiting movie stars and glitterati checked in. Ambience, sawdust on the floor, pints of Guinness.

  Minogue didn’t rise to the bait. The traffic was slowing again. Malone U-turned back to Home Farm Road.

  “When do we get a session with the Mr. and Mrs.?”

  “Tomorrow,” Minogue replied. “Mrs. had the most contact with him, the last contact over there.”

  Malone turned up the radio at the mention of pursuit. Three suspected shoplifters were legging it down Parnell Street. One of them had flashed a knife. Another had used a baseball bat on a cashier. Two squad cars were heading over. Malone turned it back down.

  “That’s who it was,” he said. “Now I have it. Only I can’t think of her name.”

  “Who?”

  “Leyne’s missus. That’s who she looks like, that film star. I can see the face exactly but. Way back, I’m talking about now. The oldies.”

  “How oldie, exactly?”

  “Ah, ages ago. Your time probably. Tall, cool type. Ended up marrying some king or the like . . .”

  “Grace Kelly?”

  Malone slapped the wheel and turned to Minogue.

  “That’s her! How’d you know?”

  EIGHT

  The lab had sent Eimear Kelly over. She sat by Murtagh’s desk reading her notes with an intent frown. Minogue sat on the edge of the desk. How did the windows get so grimy so fast here, he wondered. Éilis clapped bundles of photocopies on the top of the photocopier.

  Murtagh had photos up on the boards.

  “He says he’s waiting on ones from two other fellas,” he called over to Minogue. “They’re freelancers.”

  Minogue scrutinized the faces. Everyone was having a good time apparently. Shaughnessy had a big sunny smile. No guile in it; a bit of a gom really. He held a glass of wine in one. O’Riordan had the hat right, just like Vincent O’Brien, as he held the bridle on the racehorse. Leopardstown, a big race in the calendar: the Prime Foods Cup for four year olds. Shaughnessy was in profile there. Two women, one of them O’Riordan’s age. A trainer, by the look of him, up front with O’Riordan too.

  The Inspector sipped his tea and looked down the timetable on the board. Murtagh had updated the map with pins for Shaughnessy’s Dublin dates too.

  Murtagh pointed at a group standing in front of a doorway.

  “That one there,” he said. “That’s at an auction in Goff’s.

  The fella on the left is a Saudi Arabian prince. Can you tell? Ha ha.”

  O’Riordan was beaming at the Saudi prince. Minogue studied the camera slung over Shaughnessy’s shoulder. A sleek-looking model; couldn’t tell the make.

  “An art exhibition,” said Murtagh. He tapped the photo four times with his finger. “Kind of hoi-polloi there. It was Donohoe took those two. They’re in the papers last Sunday week. That’s Shaughnessy talking to some art dude. Film people showed up. Julia Whatshername was supposed to show but she didn’t.”

  “Tough,” said Malone. “Pops up a lot, doesn’t he. How’d he get his intros?”

  Murtagh shrugged.

  “Connected through O’Riordan? He’s keen on the socialite bit.”

  Fergal Sheehy arrived. Murtagh held up his mug. Sheehy sidled over to Éilis and said something out of the side of his mouth. She scowled and tapped the photocopy bundle one more time, hard. She began dropping the copies on the table.

  “Eimear,” said Minogue, “I know you’d like to get home. Start us off, will you?”

  Minogue checked his list in his notebook. Blood from the bootlid typed the same as Shaughnessy’s. No receipts on the floor of the car. Fine particles from the seat covers in the front not yet matched to belongings found in the car. Nine fags in the ashtray: lipstick traces plain on at least four. Tests? A week at least.

  “Eimear,” said Minogue. “The inventory from the boot again. Have ye tried all the clothes for fibre matches?”

  “All the jackets. Yes.”

  There were signs of someone’s efforts to wipe prints. Lab staff had lasered the seats for latent prints and had found plenty. The comparisons were started already.

  “The hairs you’re talking about,” said Murtagh. “Emerald gave me a list of customers they’d rented the Escort to. The car’s only six months old. There’s a total of eleven separate contracts on it, all of them tourists. Holland, the States. Germany. Some of the staff at Emerald are allowed to take the cars home, too. And there’s delivery drivers and cleaners, too.”

  Minogue read down the inventory again. Michelin was misspelled.

  “So far the wallet and the passport,” he said. “Camera, video camera — did he declare stuff on arrival?”

  Murtagh shook his head.

  “Nothing, but it’ll take a final search tomorrow at Customs to make sure.”

  “Any start on a Bórd Fáilte office, John? Visitor’s books?”

  Murtagh bit his lip and scribbled on his notepad.

  “I’ll start right after. Slipped my mind.”

  “He wasn’t packing much for a jet-setter,” said Malone. “Four shirts including what he had on when he was killed. Jeans, two other pairs of pants. Shoes, well three pairs.”

  There was no booze in the car. Shaughnessy smoked. There were wrappers from bars of chocolate, two empty Pepsi cans, fragments of crisps, apple cores. They found paper hankies, the inside of an Irish Times. He studied the list of books and maps again. Two all-Ireland roadmaps but no marks on them. An ordinance survey for Donegal with a stamp on it from a shop in Donegal town. Life in Early Ireland by Professor Seán O’Tuama. Hardly meant drunken nightclub louts wavering in the middle of the street at 3 a.m.

  A Bórd Fáilte accommodations book had been folded open at Donegal. There were two national monuments and sites books. Minogue had spotted one of the titles browsing in the Official Publications office in Molesworth Street himself and wondered if anybody ever bought them. Land and People in Early Christian Ireland. A dictionary of Irish place-names. Had Shaughnessy written postcards? Minogue blew his nose as quietly as he could.

  “Eimear,” he said then. “Are ye finished with the books? Prints, I mean.”

  She told him they’d need another day at least to fluoroscope all the books. He’d loved Ireland, the mother had said; had thought of moving here.

  “Ah, ye’re great, Eimear,” he said. “Now I know it’s early, but maybe ye had something on placing the car at all? Those plastic shopping bags in the boot?”

  They were generic to the shopping chain all over the country.

  “Shit,” said Malone.

  She’d already sent one receipt found in a bag to a man in the head office of Powers supermarkets to locate the shop. It was dated for two weeks ago.

  Minogue leafed through the shots of the boot again.

  “The damage to the car — John, did you phone Emerald on that?”

  “I did. It’s news to them. They have no record from previous rentals.”

  “What broke the panel over the spare wheel? Because he travelled light . . .?”

  Sheehy cleared his throat.

  “I’d be thinking I put the two things on the same line. The bang on the bottom of the car and the broken panel there o
ver the spare wheel.”

  “What,” said Malone. “You mean a big load in the back, and that broke it?”

  “Going over a good-sized bump, and you with a load in the back, sure you’d give it a right good belt, so you would.”

  “A boreen, are you saying, Fergal?”

  “I am. And if you didn’t know the road. And if it was nighttime . . .”

  “And if you were pissed,” said Malone.

  Murtagh tapped on his watch. It was three minutes to six. Minogue nodded.

  Murtagh rose and wheeled in Kilmartin’s Trinitron. Minogue asked Eimear about the hair from the comb. He received approximately the answer he expected. It was pretty well useless until more hair from the same person was had. Minogue thanked her. Did she want to hang around and see whatever they’d put in from the press conference? She declined and asked for squad autographs instead. Malone told her about the Works stuck at the airport, the autograph for his ma. Sheehy offered her an overused Northsider joke about a marriage proposal. Eimear Kelly, a champion middle distance runner for Dublin, starting with her primary school days in Finglas, asked Sheehy if Kerry people had learned to cook their food yet. Malone opined that he’d heard Kerry people hadn’t even finessed it to killing their food before they started chewing it.

  Sheehy affected to be stoical and even gently sage about Dubliners. He stroked his lip, sighed, and started on the airport details. There were twenty something — wait, twenty-three — vehicles still in the car park checked in the same time or before Shaughnessy’s. There was no way to pin Shaughnessy’s car to a time until all the others had been claimed.

  “People actually leave their cars in a car park in the airport for days on end?” Malone asked.

  “Gas, isn’t it,” said Sheehy. “The most of them are only a few days, but it’s getting popular.”

  “If he was done outside and then the car was parked at the airport,” said Malone, “then someone had enough of a cool head to dust the shagging trail by taking the ticket from the car.”

  “Or a clean-up man after the event,” said Minogue.

  Murtagh turned up the volume. The first shot of the news item was of the whole table. A voice-over introduced Mrs. Shaughnessy and played the last of her words. A tear glittered but didn’t run.