A Carra King

by John Brady

  “Bogs. Boreens. Bogmen. Sheep. More bogs. Sheep that look like bogmen. Bogmen that look like sheep.”

  He squinted at Minogue.

  “Answer me this: how in the name of Jases did you figure on looking there?”

  “Police science,” Minogue said.

  “No: how?”

  “Ah, Tommy, I don’t know. It’s, ah . . .”

  Malone shook his head and turned to the map again.

  “So there’s the places they were digging.”

  “About a quarter of a mile, yes.”

  “Bog roads. Turf and that, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Culchie priests and nuns they sell Nightmares, fear and holy Hell.”

  “Is that Public Works?”

  “No it isn’t,” Malone scoffed, “it’s GOD. Culchie is from Kiltimagh, right? That’s Mayo.”

  Minogue nodded. He studied the faint vapour rising above the rim of his cup. He wondered but didn’t much care if the tea would keep him awake. If they had to go to Mayo tomorrow, it’d be five hours sitting in a car, thank you very much.

  “See what turns up in the morning,” he said. “There’s trained site staff in Galway can go up and work it.”

  Malone swilled the remains of his tea in his cup. He belched behind his fist.

  “Say she’s in it then,” he said.

  Minogue sat down on the edge of the desk.

  “Do you see him doing it?” he asked Malone.

  “His oul lad would, I’ll bet. If we asked him, straight up.”

  “Maybe his mother knows him better.”

  Malone placed his cup on the desk, and looked at the pins on the map.

  “Or, the same crowd who did her, went after him, too. Caught up with him here or there and — boom.”

  Minogue yawned. He thought of the pictures soaking in on Dermot Higgins’s computer screen. Point and click. Malone was counting on his fingers.

  “One: he’s killed her,” he said. “Two: a double — whoever killed her killed him, too. But what’s he doing in Dublin Airport in the boot of a car?”

  Malone held on to his index finger and began gently waving his arms.

  “Try again: a double murder. He wasn’t topped at the same time as she was. Okay, say he doesn’t know she’s been thrown off a cliff. That’s why he’s not running to the Guards. They catch up to him and he’s gone. But where? Here in Dublin?”

  Minogue had had enough. He got up to go.

  “You’re a veteran now,” he said to Malone as he passed him. “Last thing you think about before you go to sleep, first thing you think about when you wake up.”

  “Listen,” Malone said. “Here’s what I can’t get me head around still.”

  Minogue gave him a knowing glance.

  “If he killed her, is it?”

  “Yeah. If it wasn’t people robbing, or some half-arsed effort at extortion or kidnapping your man, even: who folleyed him somewhere? Who made it quits?”

  “You should have seen them,” Kathleen said. “Or maybe not.”

  Minogue tied his other shoelace. The morning had started with a bit of sun at last. He felt groggy from the blocked nose, but not as shaky as he had predicted when he fell into bed last night.

  “The Smiths, love?”

  “Glaring right into the camera,” she said. “God, like animals. ‘The Guards murdered my brother’ — the exact words. Can’t he be taken to court for that?”

  “An interesting suggestion.”

  “‘An interesting suggestion.’ Aren’t you even the slightest bit concerned that you might be one of those Guards he’d be referring to?”

  Minogue looked up from his laces.

  “No, love. I’m not. The Smiths are chancers, and liars, and thieves. They’ll try anything.”

  “Well, did a Guard kill him?” Kathleen asked. “I can’t deny the idea has some appeal, God forgive me, when I hear about the things Larry Smith did.”

  Minogue let his gaze drift to the window. It wasn’t the subject or even the timing. It was something about Kathleen’s tone that was getting to him. He thought of Damian Little, Trigger Little. Why had Little’s wife walked out on him?

  “We can thank Gemma O’Loughlin for stirring things up,”

  Kathleen said.

  “Well, she’s playing into the hands of the likes of the Smiths.”

  “Gave me the creeps, I tell you,” she said. “The hate in his eyes, and the finger out, pointing. I thought he was pointing right through the telly at me. Ugh. ‘They’ll pay for this, the Guards,’ says he, snarling — I mean to say, are people allowed to talk like that?”

  Minogue shook the paper open. Kathleen sat back.

  “All right,” she muttered. “All right.”

  Minogue closed the paper again.

  “Iseult phoned last night, you said.”

  “She did,” Kathleen said. “You’d think it was me going to have the baby.”

  “Worrying, are you?”

  “Course I am. Aren’t you?”

  Kathleen did not need to hear of their daughter stalking his dreams. Water, daughter . . . fought her. Iseult and her imprinting. A Mozart composing right there as he was delivered.

  “I am and I amn’t,” he said.

  “‘It’s just her personality,’ is that what you’re going to say.”

  “It’s just her personality, Kathleen.”

  “You . . .!”

  She put the lid on the margarine. He studied the tendons by her knuckles.

  “I just wonder,” she whispered, “if it’s triggered something, like.”

  He turned back to the paper again.

  “She’s going to have a baby, love. A fine, big, healthy, good-looking and decent child from day one. Like its grandfather.”

  Kathleen waited until he looked up.

  “Well, now,” she said. “You remember your Uncle Miko, don’t you?”

  “What? Give me a chance. I’m only after getting — ”

  “Schizophrenia, Matt. Let’s not mince words here now.”

  “Miko? Miko Minogue?”

  “Your Uncle Miko Minogue. And what about the aunt you never met: Mary, the one in America, who died in the looney bin?”

  “Ah, Miko was quare. He never married. So maybe he was gay.”

  Kathleen gave a breathy chortle.

  “Denial.”

  “Heard that before. And very recently, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh, did you now. Well at least you know what you’re good at.”

  “Kathleen, it’s, it’s exuberance. Temporary state of being off her rocker. Come on now. You were dotty enough when you were expecting. You should hear Jim Kilmartin on the topic, let me tell you. He got stuff heaved at him.”

  “You’re not listening. You don’t understand.”

  “‘Men.’”

  “Yes it is! She’s seven months, Matt. The ups and downs with the hormones should be gone now.”

  “Oh, just steady fear now, is that it?”

  “No! More, more . . . serene or something.”

  “Iseult? Serene? Love —”

  “Genes, Matt, genes! Stop trying to cod me here! I know you think about her morning, noon and night. That’s how you are. Don’t be elbowing me because I worry! I read up on it at the library last night.”

  “What.”

  “Schizophrenia strikes young adults — ”

  “She’s twenty-three —”

  “— but is frequent statistically in the twenties. Freud called it the Irish Disease, did you know that?”

  “Freud? The same Freud who declared that the Irish were the only crowd who couldn’t be helped by psychoanalysis?”

  “Did he? If you say so. I didn’t know that, isn’t that interesting.” “Freud’s a gobshite.”

  Kathleen stared at him. He let out a breath and sat back.

  “I beg your pardon. Barrack room talk. Slipped out. I’m sorry.”

  Her voice was softer now.


  “Look,” she said, “your Uncle Miko ‘went quare’ when he was in his twenties. He was in and out of the mental hospital then all his life. Mary was hospitalized for years at a time there in Philadelphia. As I recall, she went that way after she had her first. Her first and only.”

  Minogue stared at the want ads. They seemed stupid now. Why did he read them every morning anyway?

  “I don’t know anything about it, Kathleen. Sorry. Maybe I think it’s mí adh to be talking about it. So there. I am primitive.”

  She touched his knuckles. He unclenched his fist. She fenced with her fingers before twining his in hers. Miko, the uncle singing in the fields, talking to himself at night, wandering the roads. They’d found him in his garden curled up like he was asleep by his beloved rhubarb, a smile on his face.

  “We have to face it, Matt,” she whispered. “It’s nobody’s fault. Genes.”

  “I’m not a nutcase, Kathleen. God knows I could be, easy enough. The job.”

  “We carry things though. Transmit them.”

  “Look at Daithi, then? We’re opposites, aren’t we?”

  Kathleen rubbed at his hand.

  “We’ll see when he’s older. When he gets to be himself.”

  He made to protest but she yanked on his hand.

  “Come on, now,” she said. “I hear it often enough from you in bed.”

  Minogue studied the ingredients on the margarine lid.

  “As cracked as her oul lad,” he murmured.

  “You know that’s not what I meant now.”

  “She thinks she’s God, Kathleen. Creation. Isn’t that what a woman thinks when she’s pregnant?”

  Kathleen’s laughter turned to whoops. She let herself back in the chair. He watched the tear work its way from the eyelid’s edge down by her ear.

  “Oh, you’re a scream,” she said. “A panic entirely!”

  “Are we quits then?”

  She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. Minogue poured her more tea. She was sombre now.

  “God but she’s taking the hard route, Matt. What’s the matter with her.”

  “Her baby will be the first baby in the world. She always starts from scratch.”

  She sighed.

  Minogue read an ad for piano lessons. Rates reasonable. Iseult had been going to the Wednesday recitals in the National Gallery for months now. He tried to ignore the phone ringing.

  “That’s for you,” she said. The phone rang again. He rose from the table.

  “You’re sure, are you?”

  “I told him to phone back a half an hour later. John Murtagh. I turned the phone down after I got up. You dozed off again after the alarm.”

  “Kathleen . . .!”

  “I know, I know. But I decided. He told me it could wait, that’s why.”

  FIFTEEN

  Fergal Sheehy slammed down the bootlid. Raindrops flew up as it rebounded. He swore with little fervour.

  “Are those your wellies there?” he said to Malone.

  “I don’t have any shagging wellies. Wellies are for culchies.”

  “Is that your considered opinion?” Sheehy said. “You’re an iijit then.”

  “What else did your wife’s latest fella tell you after that?”

  Sheehy pushed Minogue’s overnight further back in the boot. The car stank of cigars. Sheehy, smoking after winners, Minogue wondered. He turned down the radio. Sheehy closed the bootlid with a massive slam. Malone sat in.

  “What’s the matter with him?” he said.

  “We’re going down the country,” Minogue said. “He’s not.”

  Minogue tugged out his seat belt. Sheehy sat in heavily behind the wheel.

  Minogue still believed that the Sergeant took grim satisfaction in being given headbanger parts of an investigation.

  “I hope you’re not after breaking our duty free,” Malone called out.

  Sheehy cocked an eye at him.

  “Take me drunk lads, I’m home,” said Malone.

  Sheehy crunched reverse twice before finding it. The suspension bottomed out when he sped out the gate onto the North Circular Road.

  “Well, shag this,” said Malone. “I’m walking,”

  “Some day’s work this’ll be,” Sheehy grunted. “If this is how it’s starting.”

  “The airport follow-ups,” said Minogue.

  “The passenger lists,” said Sheehy.

  “The car park,” said Sheehy. “The lookouts for stuff being fenced. Trying to trace your man’s camera and such. But that’s only the half of it.”

  Minogue flicked at the zipper handle on his briefcase. Had he reminded Murtagh to phone again, see if the bank cards had showed up active yet?

  “Setting up to work on Aoife Hartnett, is it?”

  “God, no,” Sheehy grunted. “That’s police work. That I don’t mind.”

  He accelerated around a bread van through the amber light at Cabra Road.

  “Ferrying you and head-the-ball out to fly off to Mayo, now that’s work.”

  “Hey Fergal, me oul son,” Malone broke in. “Does there be a lot of muck and stuff out there? Down the country like. I don’t want to get me new Nikes dirty.”

  Sheehy didn’t take the bait. He worked his way through Glasnevin and turned down Griffith Avenue. Minogue tried to pin a name on the jig that Sheehy’d began whistling. Sheehy produced a cigar at the lights by the Swords Road. Minogue rolled down his window. Sheehy affected not to notice. The air was damp, with an edge to it.

  “Knock International, is it?” he said.

  “That’s it. Look, Fergal. We were only codding about the duty free.”

  “Ah, well that’s all right, so.”

  “We’re on expenses,” said Malone. “We don’t need the duty free, like.”

  Sheehy shook his head and settled into top gear for the start of the motorway.

  “See how cocky you are after falling around the place there a few hours,” he said around the cigar. “In the bog. In the pissings of rain. You jackeen.”

  Minogue allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation about whether Mayo was wetter than Clare. Sheehy maintained that Dublin people were climatically deprived. Malone offered that Sheehy hadn’t been crouched in a tent with the wind howling and the rain lashing the other night. Sheehy offered to exchange places with Malone on the trip to Mayo. Malone replied that he had finally been convinced that country people were far better educated than Dubs so the file work and searches would be best left to them. So, no.

  Minogue tuned out more often. He thought about the Carra Fields and the bog roads around them. Five thousand years ago, Garland had told him, but it had returned to bog-land by the time of the Bronze Age. With the forests down, the rain had leeched away the soil in no time at all.

  “Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad...”* he murmured.

  *“Kilcais” (Kill-cash), a poem written anonymously in the early 1700s, was a staple of school learning until very recently. It laments the destruction both of Ireland’s native forests and nobles’ houses such as Kilcais. It became generalized as a sombre comment on the loss of the past and its treasures.

  What shall we do for timber?

  The last of the woods is down.

  Kilcais and the house of its glory,

  The spot where that lady waited

  Who shamed all women for grace

  When earls came sailing to greet her

  And Mass was said in the place…

  Sheehy cocked an ear. There was warmth in his voice now.

  “Tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár,

  Níl tracht ar Kilcais ná a theaghlach . . .

  I forget the last line.”

  “S’ní cluinfear a chluin go brách,” Minogue said. “You’re good, Fergal.”

  “I bet you went through the Christian Brothers.”

  “It was a truce mostly, as I recall,” Minogue said.

  Traffic by the airport roundabout was light. Minogue studied the faces in the tour bus that had pulled o
ver. American, he guessed. A maple leaf on the front window told him otherwise. Hard to tell. He looked over the fountain at the hangars on the north apron.

  Sheehy was waved through the checkpoint. He pulled up by the taxi rank. Minogue blew his nose again and stepped out. Malone was pulling the bags out of the boot. A jet engine was warming up somewhere.

  Sheehy looked around the roadway as though he had dropped money on it. Tired, Minogue knew, chasing leads all evening and another twelve hours of it ahead of him.

  “Back tonight do you think?” Sheehy said.

  “Might be, Fergal. Are ye all right?”

  “Ah we’re in good order. As well as starting up background on the woman, I’m going to go after the people in those photos today. Start in, anyhow. See if Shaughnessy told anyone anything about what was on his mind.”

  “Good, Fergal. The calls might come better today, too.”

  “They better. There’s nothing.”

  “He’ll show up. So will she.”

  Sheehy looked over at Malone holding the door with his knee as he dragged the bags into the building.

  “Seems to me they were keen not to be noticed now,” he said. “I mean, people down the country don’t miss much.”

  Minogue nodded.

  “Good man yourself. And you stuck in Dublin, Fergal.”

  “Deliberate,” said Sheehy. “Some class of planning went on. But that’s for you to be thinking about.”

  Malone had his head glued to the window most of the time. There was low cloud soon after Dublin but there were gaps. The constant noise bothered him more than the vibration. Why hadn’t he brought a flask of coffee?

  He looked out at the propellers again. Patches of land appeared through the clouds and were swiped away again. He checked his watch. They must be getting close now. An hour’s drive from the airport should do it, an hour and a half at most.

  He remembered Caty’s disbelief when she and Daithi had returned to Dublin after their week in the west last year. Where were all the people out here, Caty wanted to know.

  Such a sense of isolation in such a small country. Et cetera. She had talked about the Famine over dinner in the new Chineser in George’s Street. “Romancing” was Kathleen’s predictable closer on Caty’s talk of a huge weight of something in the air — but a lovely girl. She’d really wake up Daithi, really liven him up.