A Carra King

by John Brady

  “Oh yes,” said Garland. “We have the funds, the plans approved. We’re into tenders already and the nitty gritty. There’s great support all over. Sure the planning and approval process was nearly a love-in. A lot of that was due to Aoife. She has that combination: a real expert in her field, and she knows how to manage outside of the fieldwork. Ideal.”

  Minogue searched Garland’s face for any irony.

  “We’re ahead of the pack here in Ireland,” he went on. “People are coming to Ireland for a lot more than the forty shades of green now. They want to see nature yes, but they want to see a place and a people full of history too, people on the periphery of the continent. I’m not sure that we know what we’re sitting on here.”

  Minogue watched a customer looking down the wine menu. These Carra Fields were nearly as far into the west as you could get without falling off into the sea.

  “Yes, indeed,” Garland added. “Like the economists say, we have good fundamentals, in the line of history. Tremendous historical resources.”

  “Our time has come, has it,” Minogue said.

  “It has indeed,” said Garland. “And not a moment too soon.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Garland rubbed at his nose. He looked at Minogue’s writing in his notebook.

  “Well, it’s an open secret the way things had been going,” he murmured. “So much had been lost.”

  “Lost,” Minogue said.

  “Yes. Chalices from monastic sites were dug up and melted down hundreds of years ago. Finds that were never reported. Standing stones used to hold up fences. The Béara Chalice, do you remember that?”

  “From the field down near Ballyferriter there a few years ago?”

  “That’s the one,” Garland said. “We had to give thirty thousand pounds to the finder for goodwill. Honest man he was, that turned it in, and him after turning the field one October and there was the chalice lying there with a big dent in it from the harrow. . . But sure what matter. A bog will push stuff up and you can never tell when or where. The thirty thousand was to tell people they’d be well paid to turn in things rather than be conniving or just breaking things up and selling them. And nowadays any fella in off the street can buy any number of electronic gadgets.”

  “Like what?” from Malone.

  “Metal detectors — curse of God on them. Well I remember the meetings we used to have back in the early seventies, when we got the first of the satellite images and we had a bit of money to do the aerial surveys. Oh, you’d laugh — or cry, maybe.”

  Garland looked over his shoulder at the group he had left.

  “It was Hobson’s choice there,” he said. “We had to decide back then if we should even be making public the digs and the finds until after we had the sites set up and secured.”

  Minogue had a second after the tickle before the sneeze erupted. When he finished blowing his nose he looked up to find Garland staring at him.

  “Tell you what I can do,” Garland said. The fingers were so short that the Inspector couldn’t stop staring at them as they were tugging, poking under Garland’s chin.

  “Come around to the office with me. I’ll see if there’s anything lying around there that’d give us any help.”

  TEN

  Garland wheezed as he walked down the lane to the car. His gait reminded Minogue of a hen walking ahead of a vehicle and trying to get into the farmyard. The Inspector slowed.

  “It’ll be me looking through her appointment diary,” Garland said. “More than that, I’d have to get advice on.”

  Minogue took in the flushed face, the chest rising and falling.

  “You can see the situation, now, can’t you?”

  “Fair enough.”

  Malone drove around the green and down Dawson Street. He asked Garland about the mummies. Everyone wanted to know about the mummies and when they’d be back. Not a day went by without someone asking after them. What about the bog man, Malone asked then, the one that looked like a shoe? And the bloodstained tunics from the 1916 Rising, were they out being cleaned or something? Minogue almost smiled. Malone, like thousands of people probably, wanted these grisly, tatty, extravagant relics, the meat and potatoes of childhood visits to the Museum, back on show. Garland sidestepped Malone’s inquiries. He began talking about regional museums, sites, interpretive centres, restoration. Minogue eyed the group of young men drinking cans of something by the Kilkenny Design shop.

  Garland told them that Viking Dublin was unexpectedly popular now. There was an interactive exhibit on Swift’s Dublin being set up too.

  “What, we’d get to talk to him,” said Malone. “Have a pint with him?”

  Two Guards on duty by the gates to Leinster House eyed them as they passed.

  “Virtually,” Garland said. “Go around by the car park here. The staff door.”

  Minogue eased his way out of the Nissan. A Guard who had been sitting in a squad car closer to the Shelbourne stepped out. Minogue met him halfway. The Guard looked over the photocard and then nodded at Malone. Minogue had forgotten who the statue was that they passed in the middle of the car park. A quartz street lamp began to buzz and glow dimly by the corner of Molesworth Street.

  Garland was having trouble finding his key. Minogue looked up to the camera over the door. Garland huffed and puffed, said damn, keyed in. A security guard met them inside the glass cubicle. Garland helloed him and signed in.

  “Anybody above, Kevin?”

  The security guard had long hair.

  “Studio lad I think.”

  Garland led the two detectives down a hall to a staircase. Minogue pinched the bridge of his nose but he couldn’t clear it. He glanced at the names on the doors, the titles: resource outreach coordinator, curators, field facilities.

  “Where do you keep the mummies now?” Malone wanted to know. Minogue heard Garland’s wheezes.

  “Ah that’d be telling. Let’s say they’re under wraps for now.”

  A door opened on to a newly decorated foyer. It was grey with bottle-green signs, its lights hidden under a plinth by the ceiling. Garland opened a door that led into a large windowless room lit only by three security lights set into the ceiling. Moveable partitions ran the length of the room.

  Minogue took in the computers in each cubicle. Postcards from Thailand and Donegal and New York, Israel, those rock-cleft palaces in Jordan. He slowed to eye a poster for the Carra Fields. Why the hell leave it black and white with masses of clouds looming overhead? Lugubrious, mystical Celt guff. Of course, that was it: the writing on the bottom was German. Calculated, marketed: smart.

  Garland and Malone were waiting for him by one of three doors. Garland tugged at his ear. Dr. Aoife Hartnett (M. Litt, MBA). Minogue tried to figure out the number of years that had taken.

  “Tell you what,” said Garland. “Let me just go into the studio and ask them if Aoife’s checked in since. Come in and have a look if you want.”

  The third door: Multimedia. That was something to do with computers. The hum from it was music. There were cartoons on the door about engineers, computers with faces, a Murphy’s law, a caveman with a laptop under his arm.

  The man facing the computer screen turned in his chair and pushed it back on its rollers. He didn’t stand.

  “Dermot,” said Garland. “You’re the night owl entirely.”

  Minogue nodded at him.

  “Dermot Higgins,” said Garland. He had to ask Malone’s name before introducing him.

  Minogue registered the stubble, the cropped hair, the T-shirt of a fake Egyptian fresco with microchips amongst the figures. If he’d tidy up the face, his dark looks would fit handily on a paperback cover: a hero, the shirt in flitters and lathered in sweat, carrying your basic swooning, busty heroine away from a burning castle.

  Minogue’s eyes strayed to the monitor. The screen filled with fog and slowly cleared to reveal a map of Ireland. Small pictures the size of postage stamps surfaced from the map and began to glow and pulsat
e.

  “Any word from Aoife there, Dermot?” Garland asked.

  Higgins shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Haven’t heard since she went, er . . .?”

  “It’s okay,” Garland said. “They know she’s on a holiday.” He turned to the two detectives.

  “Bet you don’t know what this is, on the screen.”

  Malone leaned in to study the screen.

  “The Carra Fields,” said Minogue.

  “Well, full marks to you, Insp — Matt.”

  Higgins clicked a mouse on one of the small pictures glowing in Mayo.

  “You click on the site,” said Higgins. “And — wait a minute. I’ll get the sound up properly.”

  He tugged a set of headphones from a socket by a set of speakers, and flicked buttons on what looked to Minogue to be a small stereo. The crack and rumble from the sound system startled him.

  A bódhrán drummed vigorously, like a tattoo for battle before an orchestral background flooded in. Synthesizer, Minogue wondered. The screen dissolved and reformed as a picture of an ancient village. Sounds of hammering and sharpening, birdsong and distant voices began to take over. Work and daily life — that must be the idea. The picture faded and was replaced by another, this one of what looked like a family in an old house, gathered around a fire.

  The voice-over, a woman, spoke in the present tense. Greece is a collection of warring tribes yet, she began. In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians are beginning to use uniform language. The pharaohs’ tombs will not be built for two millennia yet. There are clan fights and bloodletting across Europe. In these Carra Fields live four thousand people, farmers and herders. They have a peaceful culture. They worship gods of crop and sun and water and air. They are highly organized, cooperative people. They are on average four inches taller than adults in Europe.

  The pictures fading into one another mesmerized Minogue. He managed to glance at the others. Even Higgins looked lost in his gaze at the screen. The changed tone in the narration brought him back to the screen now.

  “They will continue to live here for another fifteen centuries,” the voice announced, “living in peace and then becoming a forgotten people at around the same time as Babylon falls. The Valley of the Kings will be abandoned to the desert and the Romans will dominate half the known world. Greek civilization will flourish and then fade, as will Rome’s. The middle ages will dawn and then fade. The first planes will pass over the west coast of Ireland before the world will know the Carra Fields again.”

  Images began to fade and arrive faster now. Long, walled fields, loose-stone dwellings, kilted and breeched ancients labouring happily among crops, sounds of cattle lowing. Who are these forgotten people, the narrator asks. An intricate pattern of stones made into a wall formed the rest of a burial chamber. A fire burning in an open field at night. The narration gave way to music again.

  Higgins hit some keys and the screen returned to a map of Ireland. He rolled away again and folded his arms. Minogue looked around the room. A half-dozen computers, several high-tech mystery boxes, lots of wires, cluttered desks, shelves overflowing.

  “Deadlines,” said Garland. “History doesn’t wait for anyone now.”

  “Is this part of Ms. Hartnett’s project?”

  “She’s the coordinator,” said Higgins. “She set up the project and sorts out who and when and what.”

  Garland turned to Minogue. He nodded at the screen.

  “Dermot is bringing us into the modern age. We’re set to launch a CD-ROM in, when is it?”

  “Five weeks,” said Higgins. “That is the plan.”

  “This’ll be a first,” said Garland. “You can put any language to it.”

  “Great,” said Minogue. Garland shifted his weight.

  “Sure there’s no word from Aoife, Dermot?” he asked. “A card, maybe?”

  “Well, I haven’t seen one yet. Sure she’s only gone awhile. Ask the others, but I’m pretty sure.”

  “Does Aoife know the ins-and-outs of this stuff here?”

  Higgins looked up at Minogue and scratched at the stubble on his cheeks.

  “Well, not the technical end really. The putting together of it. She knows how to run it, the software, I mean. She’s in on the testing and all. It’s a team thing, you see, it’s not just computers. We have a graphic artist and a programmer too.”

  “Do you get a lot of visitors here?” Minogue asked.

  “With Aoife, like?”

  “With or without.”

  Higgins looked over at Garland before he spoke.

  “There’d be people coming by fairly regularly though, I suppose. Sponsors, computing people. I don’t be here in the mornings, so I don’t know.”

  “Dermot’s in Trinity College,” said Garland. “The multimedia centre there. The greenhouse-looking place by the train station. The Oh Really, they call it.”

  Minogue said, “You mentioned sponsors.”

  “Oh, yes indeed,” said Garland. “One of the banks, Bórd Fáilte, Apple. There’s the European heritage money too, of course.”

  Minogue watched the screen return to a map of Ireland with glowing buttons.

  “It’s really something,” said Garland. “Isn’t it? No matter where you are in the world you can travel through Irish history — without leaving your chair.”

  Minogue looked at his watch.

  “Tommy, will you follow along with Mr. Garland there? I’ll be along in a few moments. Let me just look at this stuff a minute.”

  Higgins opened a can of Pepsi and rolled back into the computer. There was a stack of empty lemonade cans built on a ledge by the door. Minogue watched the mouse cursor flick about the screen, pages and pictures and boxes, folders opening and closing.

  “A lot of pressure on deadlines, is there?”

  Higgins didn’t answer for a moment.

  “As much as you’d want,” he said.

  “Part of the job, is it?”

  “Yeah. No big deal though.”

  Higgins sipped Pepsi and looked back at the screen.

  “It’s an appliance,” he said. He began clicking again. “That’s all. Think of a telly. A car. A cooker. A stereo. You know?”

  Minogue watched the erupting pages of words and colours, the dancing icons.

  “What’s the end result going to be again?”

  “A CD-ROM.”

  A small window with an image of a sunset picture over a Celtic cross sprang into the screen. The blurriness was intentional, Minogue realized. Higgins clicked a button under the cross. Minogue shifted his lean to his other foot. A film, by God.

  A box of words appeared beside the film window. Lines rolled by themselves.

  “Memory’s cheap now,” Higgins murmured.

  “Memory?”

  Higgins glanced up.

  “To run the thing, sorry.”

  “RAM, is it?”

  “Are you into computing?”

  “No.”

  “Use them at work?”

  “My colleagues do. I know how to run a search, a database.”

  “Ever see your photofit crowd in action?” Higgins asked. “The composites?”

  “A few times.”

  “Impressed?”

  “I certainly was,” said Minogue.

  The window disappeared, the mouse tugged at another, widening it.

  “You can never have too much memory. To run the software, like.”

  “A lot of this can go on the website,” Higgins went on. “Ovation.”

  A type of chocolate, Minogue thought. There was that subdued, almost dismissive tone to Higgins’s voice now, a mixture of ardour and indifference that was familiar to Minogue. He had heard it off Murtagh, the voice trailing off as he lost himself in some tricky bit of computing.

  “Ovation?” he tried.

  “Online Visitor Information. Doesn’t really fit, but.”

  “Did you make it?”

  “No. I put things together behind the scenes. Are you a
Superintendent?”

  “Inspector.”

  A window opened on the screen. Something called Director flashed on.

  “What’s Aoife done?”

  “Nothing that I know of. Do you know different?”

  “I work with her. Aoife’s the real thing. We’d be nowhere without her.”

  “Nowhere?”

  “With this. That’s her voice I used in the commentary, you know.”

  The screen went dark. The bódhráns began, and the screen began to fade into a map of Europe. A plaintive tin whistle. God, not another one, Minogue thought: when could we drop the sorrow and moaning, the suffering history stuff?

  He watched the slide show move from Vikings to Medieval Dublin, sounds of battle gave way to the marketplace. There’d be plenty more of the battle soundtrack, he reflected.

  Higgins clicked the mouse and the screen froze. He took the can of Pepsi and squeezed it with his fingers in and out.

  “It’s a new paradigm,” he said. “Do you have paradigms in the Guards?”

  “We have a specially trained squad alright, but it’s very hush-hush. How did you get to hear about it?”

  Higgins continued to flick the mouse around in short precise moves.

  “With digital technology and telecommunications, we broadcast. We send out, like. People can download the information. Words, pictures, sounds, short movies even. We don’t wait for people to come to us anymore. No need to wait for planeloads from Cleveland to hit Shannon for this.”

  “Tourism you mean. Or entertainment?”

  Higgins spread his hands. Why that gesture — indifference, resignation, indecision — reminded him of a priest’s gestures at mass, Minogue didn’t know.

  “Heritage, isn’t it?”

  Minogue stared at Higgins but he had turned back to the computer.

  “All working out is it?”

  “Everything’s on target, yes. We’re looking good.”

  Malone was walking through the doorway, Garland fussing behind him.

  “Do you have a number I can reach you at, Dermot?”

  “The Museum number. There’s voice mail now.”

  “I mean outside of the place.”

  Higgins turned back to Minogue. Garland was saying something to Malone about a meeting date next Monday that Aoife would be chairing.