The good life imm-5

by John Brady

“Listen. I was saying. When we were small, we’d go into town. Ennistymon, say-”

  “Where the hell is that? Look: turn this bloody car around.”

  “All right. Ennis-”

  “Never heard of it. Let’s get out of here. I know you’re as frustrated with this hands-off thing on the Egans-”

  “Galway city then, to get a suit of clothes-”

  “Did they wear clothes back then? I thought ye’d be too busy fighting off the shagging dinosaurs to be looking in shop windows. Turn this car around, for the love of Jases!”

  Minogue still felt dopey from the two lunch-time pints.

  “If you don’t turn the car around, I will!”

  “We’d look in the shop windows,” Minogue went on. “My mother’d say, ‘Well, why not look. It doesn’t cost to have a look, does it?’ ”

  “It might cost you a puck in the snot, pal. Come on, let’s get out of here!”

  Minogue braked by the remains of a bus-shelter.

  “Look at the place,” Kilmartin grumbled. “Beirut or something- look, there’s the car. The blue Corolla. Look at them. Oh, Christ, they’ve spotted us.”

  “They’ll log us in anyway, James. Let’s mosey on over.”

  Minogue parked behind the detectives’ car. Kilmartin stepped warily out onto the path after him.

  “That’s right,” said Minogue. “First cousin on my mother’s side.”

  Heffernan laughed. Macken, the other detective, smiled but did not take his gaze from the street. Heffernan drew on his cigarette again.

  “That’s the one, all right,” he said. “Small world, isn’t it?”

  “Buried in Corofin,” said Minogue. “I suppose we’re third cousins then. Or is it second cousins once removed?”

  “Thought you had to be dead for that,” said Kilmartin.

  “Hah,” said Heffernan. “So you have a murder then. The Mullen girl?”

  “And we have to be polite and take our turn with all of ye,” said Minogue. Heffernan turned his head and winked at him.

  “Being as we’re cousins and all. Here, if you think you’re put-upon here, wait ’til I tell you the kind of thing we have to swallow by the day here. Ever think you’d see the day when Special Branch officers-”

  “Hardworking, conscientious Special Branch officers like the ones you are unofficially sitting with this very minute,” added Macken.

  “-would be ordered to line up behind civil servants from the Revenue Commissioners and Customs?”

  “Never thought I’d see the day,” said Minogue.

  “It’s an affront,” said Heffernan.

  “An affront,” said Minogue. “Without a doubt.”

  Minogue took Kilmartin’s silence to mean that the Chief Inspector was all too aware that these two Special Branch detectives had the disquieting freedom to say anything they wanted to them. They recognized that neither member of the Murder Squad wished to be officially present in their surveillance car.

  “They’ll fall between the cracks due some technicality,” said Heffernan. “It’s too complex to go right. That’s what I think.”

  “Far too complex,” said Minogue. “Won’t go right.”

  Heffernan shifted in his seat, groaned and looked down the street again. Rubble from a demolished building next to the Egans’ shop had been there long enough to be almost completely taken over by huge-leafed weeds, cans and plastic supermarket bags swollen with household rubbish. Why did the Egans keep a shop here, why did they not seem to care about the decay and squalor? Back up the street were buildings with blocked-in windows and doors. A pub, the Good Times. The Good Times? A bookies across the street was the only functioning building in a short block which seemed similarly slated for demolition. A gas company van was parked across the street behind a two-door Lancia which Heffernan told them belonged to Bobby Egan. The blocks of flats which had gained the area its notoriety were out of sight behind the street.

  Traffic came in gluts released by a traffic light two blocks back toward the city centre. Little stopped or even slowed here on the street. Two young mothers wheeled their prams by, leaving their loud speech hanging in the air for Minogue to think about, to try to imagine what their lives were like. A trio of kids sauntered by and greeted the policemen with a combination of daring, humour and hostility. The bad language didn’t seem to have much effect on Heffernan.

  “Say nothing now,” said Macken. “But there’s our Bobby. He’s out.”

  Minogue’s reaction was to be cautious, to look for cover. Heffernan seemed amused.

  “There’s only Eddsy and the other fella in there now,” he said. “Don’t be worrying. They know the most of us who’ve been on duty here.”

  “The state of him,” Kilmartin murmured. “Walks like a gorilla. Look, the knuckles nearly running along the ground beside him.”

  And he does, thought Minogue. Bobby Egan had emerged from his brother’s shop as he had entered-alone. He glanced up and down the street before settling on the unmarked Corolla and raising his eyebrows in greeting.

  “Oh, here we go,” said Heffernan. “See what kind of a humour the bold Bobby is in this morning.”

  “You mean he comes over to you?”

  “ ’Course he does. For the chat, man. I mean to say, we’re in the same business, aren’t we? Almost. If we were social workers, he’d be our client, wouldn’t he, Ger?”

  “Our case, yes. Bobby’s a case, all right. A head-case.”

  “Loves a dare,” said Heffernan. “Smart the way only a header is smart. Bobby’d eat you alive for a joke. Know what I’m saying?”

  Something in Heffernan’s tone of bored wisdom pinged a bull’s-eye in Minogue’s mind.

  “Oh, shit,” said Macken. “Here we go now.”

  Bobby Egan ambled with a rolling gait to the car. He rubbed his hands and bent over, head next to the open window. Chewing gum slowly, heavy brows, a wide face under close-cropped hair. His eyes looked very blue. Was that a scar by his neck? Though Bobby Egan’s face close up still retained a scuffed look, Minogue could see none of the malevolence he had expected. He was well turned-out. His polo shirt had a pricey logo on it, an alligator thing, and the trousers had a sharp fold. Minogue tried to read any inscriptions on the bracelet Egan fingered.

  “ ’S’lads. How’s it going.”

  The smile looked genuine, thought Minogue. He nodded back.

  “How’s Bobby,” said Heffernan.

  “Oh, topping. And four of yous? Of a Saturday? Oooh. Very heavy, lads. Here all night again, were yiz?”

  Heffernan kept up his scrutiny of an approaching van.

  “You know yourself, Bobby.” Egan shrugged.

  “Wouldn’t want the marriage to go on the rocks on account of having to work nights now, would we? Who’re the reinforcements in the back there?”

  For an instant Minogue felt the urge to jump out of the car and go nose to nose with Bobby Egan. Was this fastidious thug the one who had slammed the senses out of Mary Mullen, slid her into the water to drown?

  “CIA,” said Macken. “But keep that to yourself. It’s top secret.”

  “Ha ha! Such a panic yiz are. Fella here looks like a farmer.”

  Minogue stared back into Egan’s eyes.

  “Well, as long as yous’re only cops, I don’t mind.”

  Egan tapped on the roof and cleared his throat.

  “All right so, lads. Keep it up. We all feel real safe here now, knowing that yous are around and all. Here-go in and support local enterprise here. Buy a packet of fags or something. The brother needs the money.”

  He hawked and spat across the roof.

  “Be seeing yous. By the way, where’s the other van, the telephone one? All the video and gear? Did one of the young lads around here rob it on you?”

  Heffernan grinned and flicked his eyes skyward.

  “Helicopter, Bobby,” he said. “One of the new ones, a spy one from the States. Can’t see it, can’t hear it-but it’s there all the time.”<
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  Egan glanced up and sniggered.

  “Oh, you had me there! Yous are gas! Funnier every day.”

  Minogue watched Egan climb into the Lancia. He tooted the horn as he drove away.

  “Bastard,” said Kilmartin. “He doesn’t know how close he is. I’d like to be there when the time comes.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Minogue. Heffernan looked over.

  “How close is he to getting his wings clipped anyway?” Minogue asked.

  “Well, you’d need to be up on the, em…”

  “ ‘The Big Picture’?”

  Heffernan’s meaty hands tapped the steering wheel.

  “That’s the size of it,” he said. “I know, I know. We heard ye wouldn’t back down at all. But we’ve been after the Egans for years. We have to go for the whole thing, the whole racket, you understand? It’s not just one, well…”

  “Just one murder,” said Minogue.

  Heffernan pursed his lips and shrugged.

  “Do you think it’s fun and games for us?” asked Macken. He sat forward in the seat, his face not a foot from Minogue’s. “See the names at the bottom of the sheet? Me and O’Hare? It’s our surveillance work that puts Bobby in the clear for the night of that murder you’re trying to sort out.”

  Minogue nodded.

  “So don’t be asking us what Tynan asked us here a few months back,” Heffernan added.

  “Tynan?” asked Kilmartin.

  “The very X,” said Heffernan. “Never in sixteen years did I hear of a Garda Commissioner sitting in on a surveillance unannounced. Drove up here one day on his own, didn’t he, Ger?”

  “An Alfa Romeo,” said Macken. “Flag-red. Like a fire engine. Street threads.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Heffernan. “Waltzes over to us. I’m having a stroke, I don’t mind telling you-”

  “Thought it was something he et,” said Macken. “Seeing things, like?”

  “ ‘Mind if I sit in?’ says Tynan. What am I going to say?”

  “Ask him if he has a twin brother who’s the Commissioner,” said Macken, “and then tell him to shag off?”

  Minogue smiled.

  “So in he gets,” said Heffernan. “Just like you sitting there. Sits there for about twenty minutes watching the comings and goings. Hardly says one word. Gets up then, goes across the street and into the shop. Comes out a few minutes later. Throws a few bags of crisps in the window-”

  “Mars bar too.”

  “-Mars bar too. Don’t know whether to laugh or what. ‘Thanks,’ says I.”

  “Cheese and Onion,” said Macken. “The crisps, like.”

  “I mean, we all heard that Tynan’s a real pit bull when he gets his teeth into something. Look out, etcetera. You could tell he was bulling when he came out of the shop. Livid, like. Face didn’t change expression, of course.”

  “That a fact,” said Kilmartin.

  “Lips didn’t move,” said Heffernan, nodding. “Doesn’t get back in the car. Just stands there, staring back at the shop. Like he’s sizing it up for demolition. The fingers doing drum rolls on the roof. Says-and I’m sure he was talking to himself now-says, ‘How is it that those reptiles are still abroad?’ Didn’t he, Ger?”

  Macken nodded.

  “Dead on,” he said. “ ‘Abroad,’ I was thinking, you know? Thought he meant a holiday or something. Didn’t twig, the way he said it.”

  “And that was when the big push started. Revenue woke up, Customs and Excise fellas started to attend the meetings. Branch Inspectors. Technicals. Task Force fellas who would step over your dead body in the hall in the normal run of things. Staff; equipment; overtime coming out our ears. Jam on the bread, the whole bit. I don’t care what anyone says about Tynan. The Iceman; the Monsignor. Tell you this: he’s the man to nail the Egans.”

  “Reptiles,” said Kilmartin. He elbowed Minogue and nodded toward the Citroen.

  Heffernan looked over at him.

  “Are you going in to see Eddsy then?”

  Eddy Egan, Eddsy, thought Minogue. A crippled reptile who commissioned pornographic pictures of girls trapped in poverty, in lousy jobs, desperate for a better life.

  “I think we will.”

  Kilmartin’s jaw was hanging but his eyes told Minogue enough. He put on his best blithe smile. Maybe he should have two pints of beer every lunch-time while the heat wave lasted. He stepped out onto the road and looked across the roof of the Toyota at Kilmartin.

  “Are we right, Jim?”

  Kilmartin caught up with Minogue before he reached the door of the shop.

  “Right for what? What the hell are we up to? Wait a minute there!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Minogue stood to the side of the doorway as two teenagers stepped out of the shop. One was already tearing the cellophane from a packet of cigarettes. Recruits, he wondered. Start them with packets of fags, let them graduate to fencing stuff they robbed.

  “I’m curious, Jim. Aren’t you?”

  “Curious? You’re cracked, is what you are. What’s here for us?”

  “Remember the man you’ve been chopping at, the man unfortunate enough to be born in Dublin? The one-”

  “Voh’ Lay-bah? What’s this got to do with him?”

  “Terry, the brother, he’s causing ructions since he got out of the ’Joy the other day.”

  “So? So?”

  “Well, Tommy had to take time off-”

  “I know, I know! Stop telling me things I know!”

  “Bear with me now, James. Terry’s in there right now. We can kill a few birds with the one stone now.”

  Kilmartin grabbed his arm.

  “What are we up to here? Running messages? We have to keep to our own side of the bed with this mob, man!”

  “Tommy was out looking for him and called in here. Nearly had a row.”

  “Why am I only hearing about this now? This is going to make a hames of the case if-”

  “It’s okay, Jim. I read him the Riot Act. I told him I’d have a word with the brother if I could. I, er, asked the lads to phone if they spotted Terry. He’s in there. That’s why I’ve come by.”

  “Oh Christ! Now he tells me! First he buys me a dinner, then he tries to soften me up with a few pints! And I, poor iijit, thought we were celebrating something.”

  “And I want the Egans to know that we’re out there too, about Mary.”

  “Back up there a minute. You want to come the heavy with Malone’s brother here?”

  Minogue was in the door now. The shop was small and cluttered and hot. It smelled of newsprint and tobacco and the trays of penny sweets. There was another smell mixed in, the Inspector realized, a beery smell. A radio talk show was on, but not so loud that Minogue could hear more than snatches of the conversation about pollution. The elderly woman Minogue had seen enter the shop several minutes before was effusive.

  “Ah, tanks, Eddsy! I knew I could depend on you, tanGod. You’re a star! Jesus…”

  She nodded at Minogue and shuffled toward the door. The man leaning against the wall held a cigarette down at his side. He brought it up slowly, rubbed his nose with his thumb and drew on the cigarette.

  “Well, fuck me,” he murmured. “Hey, Eddsy. Will you lookit these two?”

  The face that Minogue found after several moments of baffled searching was at counter level. Eddsy Egan’s face reminded him of a butcher’s window display. Sausages, he thought: puffy, grey and pink. The eyes were dull like a resting dog’s and there was a cast of tired pain across his face. The face of a man beaten down with a migraine, he thought. Egan looked from him to Kilmartin.

  “Oh, quite the resemblance,” Minogue heard Kilmartin murmur.

  “Oink, oink,” said Terry Malone. “Sniff, sniff.”

  “Yeah?” said Egan.

  “Just looking, thanks,” said Minogue.

  “You new? You don’t look new.”

  “No, I’m not new.”

  “What about your pal there.”


  Minogue looked over at Kilmartin.

  “Him? Oh, no. He’s definitely not new.”

  “Oink, oink,” said Malone.

  “Something wrong with your mouth there?” asked Kilmartin.

  “Me nose. I can’t stand certain smells.”

  “Maybe someone could fix that for you. Finish off what your brother left standing.”

  Malone frowned and pushed off from the wall.

  “What would you fucking know about that, pal?”

  Eddsy Egan shook his head. The Inspector saw a gleam on a patch of skin by Egan’s ear, a graft or stitches, he thought. The radio-show host, a man Minogue fervently disliked because he so effortlessly patronized people, said something about a levy on polluters.

  “What do you want,” said Egan.

  Stitched, stapled and grafted together again, thought Minogue. Was he good at giving pain to others? He stood a foot or more shorter than the Inspector.

  “A couple of things. Start with pictures. Girls.”

  “Uh, uh. Who wants them? The weaselly guy, Macken? Or the big lad?”

  Weaselly, thought Minogue. How did he know the name?

  “Me.”

  “And?”

  “My colleague here.”

  “For?”

  “They’ll lead me to who killed Mary.”

  Minogue followed Egan’s gaze around the meticulously stocked shelves.

  “Forecast said rain. Can you believe that though?”

  “Eventually it will.”

  “What will?”

  “Rain. I’m looking for someone in the photos.”

  “I don’t mind rain. We need a bit.”

  “Same as yourself probably, right?”

  “You can’t have a garden without mud.”

  “Or maggots,” said Kilmartin. Minogue took slow steps about the floor. He looked up and down the shelves.

  “Is he a married man, I wonder. A friend of yours? Someone you trusted, maybe?”

  “They sent the wrong guy,” said Egan. “Tell them.”

  “How big is your collection?”

  “Collection of what.”

  “Videos too?”

  Egan grimaced as he shifted his weight onto his other foot.

  “Doesn’t make sense, does it,” Minogue went on.

  “What doesn’t. You nattering on here?”’