A Carra King

by John Brady

  Kathleen sank into the front seat of the Toyota. Minogue wondered where he’d seen the driver, a detective from Store Street, before. Kathleen wound down the window.

  “Look at those trousers,” she said. “The rip there at the knee. You look like a tinker, God . . .!”

  “I’ll be all right. Thanks.”

  “But your knee…!”

  “It’d be locked up by now if it was serious, love.”

  Kathleen began to say something but stopped.

  “And you’ll phone Iseult, won’t you?” she said instead. “Tell her she could come over with us to Daithi at the Christmas.”

  “I will.”

  “And we’ll pay, of course, right?”

  “To be sure, love.”

  He nodded and stepped back. The driver took the hint.

  “You’ll stay well away from whatever commotion has come out of this? Nothing more than the stolen property case you were telling me about?”

  “Exactly. The best thing is to be busy, they say. I’ll phone you.”

  “Think about Iseult,” she said as the Toyota pulled away. “And the baby.”

  Malone accosted him in the hall on his return.

  “So Kathleen sorted you out, then?”

  “I’m to stay out of the way of trouble, and work only on, er, stolen property cases.”

  “Fair play to her,” said Malone. “Now you have to sign on to my contract.”

  He wiped away a dribble of water from his forehead. Why did this gurrier keep running water on his face and on his hair so much, Minogue wondered.

  “What are you on about, man?”

  “Here’s what: you sign for a gun. So’s I don’t have to worry about you.”

  Minogue looked at Éilis and Murtagh poring over some files. Malone pointed a finger at him.

  “Start arguing and I’m walking,” he said. Minogue looked back at him.

  “A gun? For tracing stolen property around the airport, Tommy?”

  “Don’t try that on me. It worked for the missus, but I know what’s going on. Get the equipment. And don’t roll out the excuses. This isn’t Dear Oul Dirty Dublin any more. Wake up, man.”

  Minogue said nothing. He returned to his desk and opened the file Mairéad O’Reilly had given him. He couldn’t remember where the part about the stone was. There was a page and a bit at least, though. How could O’Reilly ever know anything about the Carra stone except what he’d made up in fancy? Éilis was standing by the desk when he looked up.

  “So you’re staying, your honour?”

  “For a while, Éilis. Yes.”

  “I’m to phone Purcell to tell him when you’re gone.”

  “Who says, a stór?”

  “I says. We asked him to absent himself when we got the news you were on the way here, John Murtagh and I. In the event there might be friction. Emotions running high, your honour.”

  Minogue watched her light another cigarette.

  “He’s away off in C Wing. He took some files with him. Smith and that. So: I’ll be phoning him . . .?”

  “Would you phone Firearms Issue for me first please.”

  “Firearms, you said?”

  “Exactly, Éilis. Firearms Issue. We’re still on alert. Tommy needs a replacement. His was bagged at the scene, the shooting.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And I’ll be wanting one.”

  She drew on the cigarette. Minogue looked up at her. Her face remained impassive.

  “Then we’ll be off,” he said.

  Malone backed the Opel out of the parking spot. He drove slowly, adjusting the mirror. Whoever had used the Opel last had smoked. Minogue imagined a couple of detectives on surveillance, smoking and eating and farting for days. Weeks, maybe. He rolled down the window more.

  He couldn’t get comfortable. He reached up under his arm to pull the strap looser. It was too much trouble to take off here. The Velcro was too far around to reach without taking off his jacket. He felt the aches as a clamp across his lower back and his shoulders now. He yawned and stretched. A faint relic of Kathleen’s perfume came to him.

  Malone’s driving began to annoy him.

  “Why are you driving like this?”

  “Like who?”

  “It’s not ‘who,’ it’s ‘what.’ You’re driving too carefully.”

  “Jases, if it’s not one thing with you it’s another. I’m shook, that’s why.”

  Malone passed Mountjoy Prison without a glance over. Any time he passed it, Minogue had thought of Malone’s brother. Malone made the green light at Drumcondra Road. A convoy of articulated lorries under plumes of diesel smoke awaited them. Malone swore and settled the car into second gear between the lorries.

  “So we’re looking for a rock,” he said. “This ‘stolen property’ gig you told Kathleen about. And if Tynan wants to know.”

  “Right,” said Minogue. “A stone.”

  “But there is no rock you’re telling me. Right?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So when we do find it we’ll know then that it’s not there. Right?”

  Minogue studied the patterns of dirt at the doors of the lorry ahead.

  “Now you have it.”

  Malone grunted and pulled around one of the lorries. Minogue eyed the Cat and Cage Pub over the passing traffic.

  “Leave no stone unturned,” said Malone. “Is that the idea?”

  He had to wait until the lights at Collins Avenue turned to shake off the last of the convoy. Minogue thought of Leyne, the eyes set into those pouchy folds. Like a lizard. Tired of life was he. How many things had he collected over the years. Geraldine Shaughnessy must have known about them. The son too. He thought of the winding bog road up by Carra, the ditches. . . He opened his eyes as Malone took the curve leading to the roundabout for the airport.

  “Where am I going?”

  “What?”

  “You dozed off,” said Malone. “Where am I going, I said?”

  “Turn down the first chance you get to the freight end. The South Apron, it’s called.”

  “Is it that we don’t want them to know we’re poking around here or that we don’t care?”

  Minogue was stiff. There couldn’t be bruises everywhere, he thought. He moved his neck slowly. The strap for the pistol harness was biting across his ribs.

  “The former,” he managed and levered himself more upright. “Here’s the routine. We’re just looking around to double-check we didn’t overlook anything in the area.”

  Minogue didn’t expect a checkpoint just inside the entrance to the freight terminals.

  “There’s an unmarked over there,” said Malone.

  The Guard was brash, puzzled. Malone took his card back.

  “It’s a walkabout,” said Minogue. “Just in case we missed something.”

  “The American fella? In the boot of the car?”

  “Yeah,” said Malone. “The pressure’s on. To make sure we covered everything.”

  “Fair enough,” said the Guard.

  “Thanks,” said Minogue. “By the way, are you permanent here? This checkpoint, I mean.”

  The Guard made a face as he tried to dislodge something from his eye.

  “Ah no, we’re only here for autographs.”

  He stopped poking and looked back down at Malone.

  “Only joking. The Works are due in sometime this evening.”

  “So,” said Malone. “No more scaring the shite out of some sheikh’s wife for the fans.”

  “Right,” said the Guard, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Ah sure we’ll be out here again in a few days to get rid of them again.”

  Minogue leaned over and looked up at the Guard.

  “The band, you mean?”

  “Yep. They go on tour in the States, I heard.”

  Minogue looked over at the freight buildings.

  “The big time,” said the Guard. “That’s how it is.”

  “Is there an office out he
re with a layout of this end of the airport?”

  “Go over there. That’s the start of the Customs Hall. Shipping and receiving’s down the far side of it. There’s offices there, the Customs and Excise mob. Federal Express, other ones.”

  He stopped poking at his eye, looked down at his finger and then at Minogue.

  “Thanks,” said Minogue.

  Malone stopped tugging and pushing the gear stick across neutral.

  “What’s on your mind there?” he said to Minogue.

  “I’m thinking how I’d get something out of the country in a hurry.”

  Minogue shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  Malone held out his hands over the wheel.

  “Gimme. What’s this? You’re saying he gets to the airport, he’s in a corner because he’s got — but there is no Carra thing, for Jases’ sake. You even say that. What’s her name there down in Mayo, you even phoned her again just before we left. Mairéad O’Reilly. Legends, man, all stories, bullshit. Yeah?”

  “I said there’s no ‘The Carra Stone,’ Tommy.”

  “Yeah, yeah? Yeah…? Well try English, will you, boss.”

  “The indefinite article.”

  “The what?”

  “There may be a Carra stone.”

  He tapped on the dashboard and pointed to a sign before Malone could start in on more.

  “Park it over there, Tommy. Air Freight Storage. See if a walk’ll wake me up.”

  The Customs and Excise officer was a trim, black-haired Dubliner by the name of Paddy Mac. Mac-what was not volunteered and Minogue didn’t ask. Dyed or not, the pompadour hair and the thick sideburns impressed the Inspector. A man who could so steadfastly cling to the fashions of his early teens was a man well chosen to keep track of things. Paddy Mac looked up at him.

  “That mugshot must have been taken awhile back, chief.”

  “January.”

  “This last January? What happened since? No offence, like, but.”

  Minogue looked around the office. There were showband photos on the wall over his desk. He wondered if these were collector’s items by now. Was it that long ago? The Hucklebuck, Kathleen and he went to the club on Harcourt Street. What were those photos of birds? A bunch of boxes, cages — pigeons, of course: a pigeon racer.

  Malone tilted his head, studied the photos of the showbands.

  “What?” said Paddy Mac.

  “Just wondering who they were,” Malone said. He turned to Paddy Mac.

  “No sign of the Works or any of them,” said Malone. Paddy Mac put his hands on his hips. He studied Malone for several moments.

  “Why would there be?”

  “The next generation maybe?”

  “They’re nothing to me. Dossers, fakers, shapers. Along with the rest of them. Junkies.”

  “Do you think?”

  “You’d know, wouldn’t you? Your mob, I mean.”

  The sharp tang of cardboard that had stung in Minogue’s nose had given way to an oily smell. He hadn’t seen an ashtray.

  “Wait a minute but,” said Malone. “Wasn’t Elvis the world’s biggest junkie?”

  “When they killed him, yeah.”

  “Who killed him? He ate his way into the bloody coffin.”

  Paddy Mac gave Minogue a bleak look.

  “You and me’d know better, I’d like to think. What do you say to that shite?”

  “Well, I haven’t really kept up,” said Minogue.

  “What’s to keep up with?”

  “GOD? I don’t know really.”

  “GOD? Holy, crucified Jases. That bunch a — ”

  Malone shuffled, looked around the room. Paddy Mac glared at him.

  “— and don’t start in on Elvis again. They broke him, so they did. Did you see the Hawaii comeback? That’s when I knew it was over. That’s when I knew what the sixties had been all about.”

  Minogue exchanged a look with Malone. The weariness, the aches were like jet lag and a hangover combined. His eyes were beginning to signal the return of a headache.

  “So,” said Paddy Mac. “You want to look around. What are we looking for?”

  “Anything,” said Minogue.

  “A murder weapon maybe?”

  “Well, yes. Stuff that might have been robbed from a car. Rags, gloves.”

  “There were Guards all over the kip there the other day outside here. You think that someone came in here for dirty work? Airport staff?”

  Minogue held up his hands, wiggled them.

  “What, we’re under suspicion?”

  “Can we wander around?” Minogue asked.

  Paddy Mac waited a moment.

  “Okay,” he said. “Suit yourselves. I mean, yous’re the law. Wander all you like — but there’s locked areas now.”

  Minogue studied the map pinned to a corkboard.

  “Have you a plan of the place you’d give me, now?”

  Paddy Mac tugged at his belt.

  “Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll go around with yous. Stretch me legs.”

  He gave Malone the eye. Malone put up his hands.

  “As long as hair-oil here doesn’t start on musical theory.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Paddy Mac used his radio antenna to point. watched him wave it about, jab with the antenna. A conductor of sorts, he thought.

  “Air freight inspections start there,” said Paddy Mac. “That’s for outbound with all the papers ready. The customs brokers spots there, see? There’s the entry to the Customs Hall. Incoming, inspections.”

  Minogue turned the corner and looked down at the open door at the far end of the warehouse. Paddy Mac wheeled and faced Minogue.

  “This Yank,” he said. “What was he up to out here anyway?”

  “Well, there you have me.”

  A forklift shot by the doorway and scooted out of sight behind stacks of crates. Pallets of tightly wrapped sacks rose to the ceiling behind them. The creases and the dull shine of the plastic wrap put Minogue in mind of shrouds. Pupae. He paused to yawn, and then followed Paddy Mac through a double-door into what looked like another warehouse. He studied the heavy wire mesh on the cages they passed.

  “Now,” said Paddy Mac. “Here’s a sight. Are you ready for this, are you?”

  “What?”

  “Over there, in that cage. Look at that gear, will you.”

  Minogue stepped through the doorway. He tried to count the boxes. Many of them were sheathed in aluminum. Others were made of black panels edged with metal bands and reinforced corners. Paddy Mac twisted and tugged the lock out of the holder and followed Minogue.

  “That’s the better part of a half a payload there,” he said. “I saw it coming in. I asked what’shisname what it was worth.”

  “Who?”

  “Ah, your man — what’s his name? He came out one day before they took the spot. The manager, with the pigtail.”

  “The ponytail,” said Malone.

  “Yeah . . . Daly: that’s him. ‘Two hundred grand’ says he. So I says, why not rent it all there, like.”

  Minogue recognized none of the brand names on the boxes.

  “‘It’s all customized’ says he,” Paddy Mac went on. “Like I didn’t know. What it is, is to cover ’em up. To drown ’em out.”

  “Do you think?” said Minogue.

  “What, do you think they can actually play their instruments?”

  “Why would he be out here doing the loading and unloading? Is that common?”

  “Well, Jases, I don’t know,” said Paddy Mac. “He doesn’t want slip-ups . . .?”

  Minogue strained to read part of a sticker. Mockb—. Moscow, of course.

  “Shiny lights, smoke,” Paddy Mac said. “Earrings, hats. Making a racket. Throw in a few big words, pretend they’re philosophers. That’s not your hungry kid driving an oul car up to Memphis, just him and his guitar, is it.”

  Gih-tar, Minogue registered. Paddy Mac was in deep.

  “Well, what are they usi
ng in Germany then,” asked Malone, “if their gear is all packed here?”

  “Germany? For some video gig there on the Berlin Wall or whatever the hell they were on about?”

  Minogue craned his neck to see over a box the size of a sofa.

  “Ah, they’d be just standing there for that. Throwing shapes, that’s about it.”

  Minogue turned to him.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Ah the video shite,” said Paddy Mac, grimacing. “Hate to break it to yous now, but they dub everything. Didn’t you know that? It’s not the real thing at all, at all. Shapers, man. That’s all.”

  “Go way,” said Minogue.

  “I’m telling you. It’s not singing or anything. It’s play-acting. ”

  “So this is their gear then, their real equipment?”

  Paddy Mac snorted and waved his arm. The disdain came to Minogue as the genial, indulgent sarcasm that had baffled him for years after he had first arrived in Dublin.

  “I suppose,” he said. “I don’t know what’s in them. That’s for someone to inspect in the States, isn’t it.”

  “Not here?”

  “Right. Customs here don’t touch these ones. They’ll get the treatment over beyond when that stuff lands, yes sir. They don’t be messing around over there, let me tell you. The electronics and sniffers and what have you. No messing there, man — Christ, they’ll be all over the stuff for you know what. The dope.”

  Paddy Mac plucked a pouch from a hook on the mesh by the doorway. He rummaged and scanned a half-page document. Minogue studied the sharp, even lines on his sideburns.

  “Goes out to the States day after tomorrow,” Paddy Mac declared. He looked up at Minogue.

  “It’s common enough, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Really.”

  “Sure it is. You have stuff brought out days ahead of time. It needs wrapping, tying up. Pallets and that? Organize the heights and widths for the plane doors. You don’t want to pull a load of stuff out on the tarmac, hoist it up to the bay and find it’s three inches too big, do you? Jases, no. You have to shuffle stuff. Balance, weight, height. It’s a science, I’m not joking you.”

  Minogue shoved against one of the boxes with his thigh. It didn’t budge.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Paddy Mac, “isn’t it. Weighs a ton. And it all has to be set and balanced, packed right.”