by John Brady
“Look at the shine off that car, will you,” he said. “Blind a beggar, so it would.”
A chauffeur stepped around one of the gateposts that formed the entry to the yard of the Station and began to study the dowdy Fiat and its passengers.
“A fiver says that’s down from the German Embassy in Dublin,” said Crossan. “Herr Spillner being the big-noise industrialist back in the fatherland.”
Minogue plucked the key out of the ignition and nodded at the chauffeur, a well turned out man in his thirties, thick-set without looking at all flabby.
“ Guten tag,” said Crossan. The chauffeur stood with his feet spread and nodded.
The lawyer strode down the short avenue and sprang, it seemed to Minogue, through the architraved door into the public office. A tall Guard with a bony nose and a flushed complexion looked up and greeted Crossan before allowing his eyes to search Hoey’s features. God, thought Minogue, Hoey probably looks like a suspect they were bringing to a lock-up. The Guard studied Minogue’s card for several seconds.
“Are ye expected, now?”
“We’re here to see Sergeant Ahearne,” said Crossan.
The Guard tugged at his tunic to straighten it under his belt.
“Hold on a minute, yes,” he said. “He’s on the premises, I believe.”
With a shy smile the Guard turned tail and went through a door behind the counter. Two Guards ambled in the door, laughing, from the yard.
“How’s Alo?” asked the older one. He had ginger hair and pale, tired eyes still full of humour after the joke he had been exchanging with his mate.
“I’ve been better,” said Crossan.
Ginger-hair smiled at Hoey.
“Did Alo do that to you?”
A Guard in the lighter blue tunic of a Superintendent came through the door into the public office. For several moments, Minogue could not grasp what was going on. The Superintendent’s eyes had been on Minogue’s from the moment he had appeared around the door. The two Guards in from patrol stopped abruptly, straightened and looked from the Superintendent to Sergeant Ahearne following. Behind Ahearne came the desk-officer who dared a look toward Minogue before looking away. Minogue’s thinking still lagged behind his awareness that he had walked into an ambush.
Superintendent Thomas Russell of the County Clare Division of the Garda Siochana was fifty-three years on earth. He retained a full head of crinkly hair which flowed back from a heavily lined forehead. The hair reminded Minogue of a child’s drawing of ocean waves. Two unfashionable patches of sideburn hair high on Russell’s cheeks hinted at an inflexibility. Vanity, Minogue guessed. Look at me, I am fierce. I can grow hair right up under my eyes. Thick eyebrows couldn’t deliver any softer, owlish aspects to this warrior’s face. Minogue wondered if Russell’s wide face with the thrusting tufts and the incongruously small features looked this impassive as a matter of course.
“Gentlemen,” said Russell. “Will you step into this room here?”
The trio were ushered in ahead of Ahearne and Russell. Ahearne, an athlete run to fat after resting on laurels probably twenty years old, but soft on his feet yet, pulled out chairs. Russell nodded as introductions were made. Then he opened with a weak facsimile of humour.
“Well. To find Jim Kilmartin’s boys here in Ennis. Who’d have imagined our good fortune?”
Minogue did not mistake the tone. He wondered what Russell being here had to do with the Mercedes bearing CD plates outside.
“I’m acting for the deceased,” said Crossan. “I met the Inspector socially and I called him for advice. He was acquainted with Bourke.”
Russell gave Crossan a blank look.
“Half the county was well acquainted with Jamesy Bourke, I believe,” said Russell.
Minogue looked into the flat face and the tiny eyes which hardly moved.
“This man Spillner shot him the once?” Minogue asked.
“The once, yes,” Ahearne replied. “But with two barrels.”
“And killed him outright?”
“Very much so,” said Ahearne. He shifted slightly in his chair, drawing a squeak from the vinyl as he issued a sympathetic nod.
“How far away from Bourke was he when he-”
Russell raised his hand.
“Inspector. You appear to be launching an investigation here. Sergeant Ahearne is, in point of fact, the investigating officer. He is already in possession of sufficient material to pursue the case to its conclusion.”
Minogue looked at Ahearne. The sergeant blinked and rubbed his hands together once.
“That’s great,” said Minogue.
“We’d like to talk to this Spillner man,” said Crossan.
“Ah, Mr Crossan,” Russell said with exaggerated civility. “In what capacity, now?”
“As counsel for Jamesy Bourke.”
“He retained you, did he?”
“As a friend, then.”
“A friend? With all due respect now, Mr Crossan,” said Russell, leaning in slightly, “this is a delicate enough matter. There’s a foreign national involved. There’s the possibility of hob-lawyers-no aspirations on your profession, now-trying to make something of this business. The issue of land, I mean. Now, I don’t see how you can help the investigation by interviewing Mr Spillner-”
“ Herr Spillner,” said Crossan.
Russell fixed a stare on the barrister before resuming.
“I don’t see how you can help us by interviewing this man. All the expertise and training, well, we have them at hand. The Inspector here can assure you of that, of the professionalism and training we have here on the Force.”
Russell paused to raise his eyebrows as he looked at Minogue.
“The County Coroner has provided us with a very clear picture of what happened, and what Mr Spillner has told us accords very closely with that report. It’s a tragic event. But the atmosphere in parts of the county, what with hooligans with guns and their heads full of slogans, well… I would tend to lay some of the blame at the feet of those people for helping to make things so strained.”
He turned to Minogue.
“Are you up on the tensions we are having here in Clare, Inspector? There are people now from fine families getting caught up in this nonsense.”
So Russell knew that he was related to Eoin, Minogue thought. He returned Russell’s look. The Superintendent continued with a poor pretence at being guileless.
“Now, I don’t know if it’s widely known in Dublin, but we might have a repeat of the Land War on our hands here. Whiteboys and Rapparees they’re not. These characters have machine guns, etcetera.”
“If he was so close to Bourke, why did he kill him?” Crossan demanded.
Russell jumped on the question.
“This Mr Spillner has a great command of English, am I right, Sean?”
Ahearne nodded.
“Very good indeed. Very precise account of everything, right down to the times. He was out to the house with us twice and we re-enacted the whole thing several times. It’s all consistent with what the PM shows.”
“‘Suggests,’ you mean,” said Crossan. “Why did he kill Bourke?”
“It was night,” said Ahearne. “He didn’t know Bourke from Adam. And he thought Bourke had a gun in his fist-”
“A gun?” Crossan echoed.
Ahearne shrugged. “We have an ashplant from beside the house. Spillner says he was certain that Bourke was pointing a rifle at him. So he let fly with the shotgun.”
“His defence is that he was in fear of his life?” Crossan spoke with a sharp tone of incredulity.
“It’s not for us to be deciding or guessing at what Spillner will or will not claim in his defence,” Russell retorted. “But I imagine that will be brought up at an inquest.”
“Inquest?” asked Crossan. “Don’t you mean trial?”
Russell’s expression didn’t change but he spoke more softly now.
“You hardly need me to explain the procedures to you, now, Mr Crossan. We give o
ur reports to the authorities.”
Russell paused to let his listeners reflect on the way he said “authorities.”
“They’ll decide how to proceed on behalf of the State. We have plenty on our plates here in Clare, but we’ll proceed in good order.”
His eyes left Crossan and they settled again on Minogue. Russell’s expression had now changed but faintly. The edges of his mouth rose, in what ordinary citizens might believe was a smile.
“Remember me to Jimmy, won’t you, when you go back to Dublin.” The Superintendent rose from the table. “But tell him that Mayo should stick to the football. Leave the hurling to experts.”
Minogue was surprised to find Russell’s hand extended across the table. He shook hands with the Superintendent.
“Such as?” Minogue tried.
“Such as Waterford.”
Close, Minogue thought. He had guessed Russell’s accent as high-hat gloss on Kilkenny.
“Funny you’d pick them, now,” said Minogue. “My money’d be on Clare.”
“Safe home to ye, now,” said Russell, and turned on his heel.
Minogue looked back up the short avenue which led from Abbey Street into Ennis Garda Station. Solid, he thought, almost like a fortress. Gates and a house fit to stop any number of pike-bearing rebels when the gentry had built it as Abbeyfield House, two hundred and fifty years ago.
“Come on, will you,” barked Crossan. “Let’s not stand here gawking like wallflowers that were stood up on a date. I have work to do.”
“Well, the Mercedes is gone,” said Hoey.
“I’ll bet you Russell kept us there, lecturing, so as this cowboy German could get his bail fixed and have himself whisked away in that bloody Mercedes.”
A sudden gust blew grit down the street into Minogue’s face. He knew then what he would do. He followed Crossan.
“I’d like to go back in there and annoy that bollocks,” the lawyer said. “But where would that get us? A brick wall. Jesus!”
The swollen eyes widened even further, and Minogue took a step back. The sharp, cool air had greyed the barrister’s skin and watered his eyes. They reminded Minogue of some picture, one from his children’s storybooks.
“Not a damn word about charges, about whether he’s to stay in custody,” Crossan went on. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this Spillner fella is on his way to Shannon Airport this very minute.”
“Let’s go somewhere and sit down and drink a cup of coffee,” said Minogue. “Have a think and a chat. I have a phone call to make.”
Crossan blew out smoke and pointed conclusively at the curb.
A blue Ford Sierra with its antennae waving came down the avenue. Russell nodded to them from the passenger seat before the car picked up speed.
“Just happened to be there,” said Hoey.
Minogue drew his coat around him and looked up at the brown and grey clouds massed over the town. The River Fergus hissed over a weir, grey itself and flat, its banks lined with blackening leaves.
He studied the roof lines and the windows along Abbey Street.
“Time to stir the pot, I think,” he murmured. “Throw in another ingredient. I need a phone.”
Minogue sat next to Crossan and looked at the plate of sandwiches.
“Where’s Shea gone?”
“Off to get fags,” said Crossan. “Here, what happened to him anyway?”
“He’s recuperating from a recent accident.”
“Would he need to be irrigating his throat too with a few jars, maybe? I for one certainly feel the need this very minute.”
Minogue gave Crossan a lingering look to drive home the hint.
“No. The few jars are definitely not part of the cure,” Minogue said, and he bit into a sandwich.
“What’s this ‘ingredient’ you were talking about?”
“I phoned a man I wouldn’t ordinarily phone. You may know him. Shorty Hynes.”
“Not that bloody ghoul that writes for the Indo, is it? The murder-and-mayhem fella? Do you know him?”
The Inspector nodded. “I certainly do. He’s a royal pain in the arse. He’ll do nicely, I imagine.”
“Do what?”
“He’ll be phoning the Garda Commissioner about this fella Spillner. Why his bail might allow him to hightail it off to Germany courtesy of the German Embassy.”
“Oho,” Crossan snorted. “Good move there, Guard. The proverbial leak. I didn’t think you had it in you. You might as well fill in your request for asylum here in Clare after a stunt like that.”
“The public interest and the right to know, counsellor.”
Minogue took another bite and wondered how long it would take for Kilmartin to phone. Half an hour, he guessed. Hoey returned, tearing the cellophane from a packet of Majors.
“Let’s go over what we have, so far,” said Minogue. “See where the gaps might be.”
He rearranged the photocopies on the table and looked to Crossan.
“Will you start?”
“All right. We have the summary and copies of the book of evidence used to prosecute him.”
“Yep,” said Minogue. “All I found were copies of two Dublin newspapers’ coverage. Nothing new.”
“We all know that no appeal launched means no transcript?” Crossan asked.
Minogue nodded. “The full steno record is above in the strong-room in the Criminal Court in Green Street,” he said.
“Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here, but,” said Hoey, “why didn’t Bourke launch an appeal if the prosecution case was shaky? Didn’t his lawyer push him about an appeal, anyway?”
“Well, Jamesy recalled Tighe talking to him about it,” said Crossan. “And I talked to Tighe about it. According to him, Jamesy turned it down. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Bourke was a poet, you have to understand, and he had to have his way right to the end,’ says Tighe to me.”
“What does that mean, the poet thing?” asked Minogue.
“To pay the price maybe,” Crossan replied. “Give one’s life in lieu, that sort of grand gesture.”
“He wanted to be punished for killing his sweetheart, like?” Hoey asked.
The lawyer looked squarely at Hoey.
“A crooked kind of grandeur in this day and age, you’re thinking?”
Hoey’s mouth hung slightly open. A stream of smoke cascaded slowly over his lower lip as he squinted at the barrister. Crossan took a deep breath, blew it out slowly from puffed cheeks and sat back in his chair.
“Something broke inside Jamesy the first day of the trial, Tighe said. I believe that. It was like he gave up. And that attitude stayed with him for a long time, he told me.”
“Why’d he give up?” Minogue asked. “The second day, you said.”
“Okay. Tighe entered the not-guilty plea. The prosecution is going to use circumstantial evidence to put Jamesy there with the matches in his hand and corroboration as regards a motive. State gets up, Tighe told me, and presents witnesses: the Guard, Naughton. Tighe’s hands are tied in a sense because Jamesy had blacked out. But Tighe knows what he wants out of the not-guilty; the worst he can get, he figures, is manslaughter. Pucks of diminished responsibility and everything else. So far, so good. Jamesy was very straight with Tighe, said he couldn’t remember a damn thing, yes, he was really angry at Jane Clark, etcetera. So Tighe is sailing along nicely until the State gets witnesses talking about Jane Clark. The judge didn’t rule many of them out of order, Tighe remembers. He was new to the job and wasn’t as full of vinegar as maybe he should have been. To make a long story short, Jamesy Bourke erupts right there in the court.”
“He’s embarrassed at the information coming out?” Hoey asked.
“Oh, Christ, man, more than that-way more,” said Crossan. “‘Who was anyone here to judge her…bunch of hypocrites…always out to get him.’ The whole bit. Tighe tries to calm him down but makes a big mistake. He confides to Jamesy that it’s fine by him to have comment on Jane Clark’s character because that’ll help.
Provocation, track record, bad influence, hashish-you can make that into anything, really. Jamesy sees red now. He was never the willing fool, he tells Tighe. Furthermore, he tells Tighe that he will-and Tighe remembers the exact words-knock his fucking block off if he has any part in sullying the name of Jane Clark.”
Crossan sat back and looked from Minogue to Hoey and back.
“So there he is in open court displaying the personality and behaviour a judge and jury scrutinise all the more keenly when there’s so much hanging on circumstantial evidence anyway,” said Minogue.
“The nail on the head,” said Crossan. “From then on, Jamesy gave up on it. So Tighe says.”
“So what did Tighe do?” Hoey asked.
“He did his best, I suppose, but maybe he lacked the experience. Maybe Jamesy threw him off track so much that… Well, maybe it’s in the full trial record that Tighe at least tried to hammer at the Guards or got some leverage out of the post-mortem report or something. Tighe actually ended up calling witnesses or cross-examining them as to Jane Clark’s mode of living up at the cottage.”
“A bit of character assassination in the service of diminishing his guilt,” said Minogue.
Crossan almost smiled.
“You kept your ears open in all those trials you’ve attended, I can tell,” he said. “God help you.”
“Yeah, well,” Hoey began, “how come it’s twelve years later and we’re talking about this?”
“Your man here”-Crossan nodded at Minogue-“asked me that the other day: ‘Why all these years later?’ Jamesy began to remember bits of things from that night. He thought it was the electroshock sessions he had after his breakdown that messed up his brain, his mind. Don’t forget, he was well and truly gargled the night of the fire. But he did say that he remembered Jane Clark hadn’t been drinking all that much that night. Nowhere near drunk enough to pass out.”
“How did he know that?” Hoey interrupted. “The way I heard it, he showed up at her place only to see she had the other fella there, Howard. Then they had a row and left. Bourke was away from the cottage two or three hours. Maybe she hit the bottle after he left.”
“She wasn’t drunk while he was there,” said Crossan.
