by John Brady
“It’s a fucking set-up! They knew all along!”
All along? They knew who he was? How?
“Did you?” asked Ciaran in a soft voice. The other man closed the hall door.
Minogue’s instincts had already begun to size up the pair. Ciaran with the gun didn’t look drunk. He acted with a natural authority. The one with the ear-ring had been drinking, hence an unknown. Better Ciaran to have the gun? What could he play on, appeal to? They knew he was a Guard. He had seen their faces. If he tried to fool them into believing there really were Guards surrounding the house… Sheila Howard stood in the doorway to the living-room. Minogue lost track of his calculations and thoughts. He felt himself falling into panic. He looked into Ciaran’s eyes.
“Well, did you?” said Ciaran.
Minogue sensed with a dull, awful certainty that this Ciaran was the most dangerous. Behind the calm he felt his rage. When this fella acted, there’d be no warning, he knew. The details in the hall pressed in on Minogue. Furniture polish, the picture frames, the stupid music from a stupid DJ in Dublin who couldn’t imagine Minogue’s terror here.
“There is! We’re fucked!” hissed the other. “I’m telling you! It was this bastard-!”
He threw a sudden punch at Minogue. The Inspector tried to dodge it but the blow glanced off his cheek. He tottered to the wall off-balance, bumping against Ciaran on the way. The shock woke something in him and he came back from the wall in a crouch, his head still roaring from the impact.
“Stop it,” he heard Sheila Howard shouting. “Don’t, don’t!”
Minogue took Ciaran down sideways and chopped at him with his elbow as it met his stomach. The gun fell to the floor and sour breath whooshed out over Minogue’s face. He rolled over the downed Ciaran and looked around the floor for the gun.
“Don’t!” Sheila Howard shrieked.
Minogue tried to claw himself up but stopped when he saw the gun pointing directly into his eye, the wide-eyed face behind it and the stud glittering to the side of his head. Ciaran began to wriggle beside him and Minogue looked down. As he did, he heard Sheila Howard’s shriek again. The hall turned white and disappeared into the glare. In the whiteness and pain and noise, he felt himself falling. Terror and anger overwhelmed him. Kathleen, he thought, I shouldn’t have.
Jiggling, dull and constant noise, squeaks. Someone spoke far away. Pain-awful pain he could not endure. His cheek was pressed down on a rag smelling of paint. If things would only stop. He was on his chest. He felt the van’s tyres clip the innumerable cuts in the tarred road, slap the bigger holes and then bounce over the corrugated bumps the moving bog had pressed up from below.
Alive, he thought. He turned his head slightly and sent flashes of pain across his eyes. Minogue groaned. The van bobbed and rose to the top of its springs before it dropped back, swaying and shuddering.
“Slow down,” said a man’s voice. “We’ve enough on our plate. Don’t dump us all in the ditch.” The van slowed and Minogue opened his eyes again. Sheila Howard was leaning against a wheel-well, looking down at him. Her expression told him nothing.
“Your man’s back with us,” said a voice from the front.
Minogue recognised Ciaran’s voice now. The van braked hard then, and Minogue slid forward. Sheila Howard fell over and rolled into the back of the bench seat. Minogue yelped as pain shot through his neck. Her hand came to rest inches from his face. The van leaned hard to one side. Minogue felt the tyres dig into the tar macadam. He heard the start of the ripping scratch that presaged a skid proper and braced himself, but the van righted itself with a sudden bob. Minogue rolled over and gritted his teeth against the flashes of pain.
“Jesus Christ!” Ciaran shouted. “Can you do nothing right today? Are you trying to fucking kill us?”
Minogue’s eyes seemed to swell. The van began to climb and Minogue opened his eyelids slightly. The grey shapes of boulders slid back into the fog in the wake of the van. Minogue opened his eyelids a little more. The side of his face on which he had been lying still felt numb. He held the back of his neck and pushed up on one elbow.
“Hey!”
Minogue looked up. Ciaran was leaning over the seat-back.
“Lie down.”
The pain was now like a weight on his neck and shoulders. Sheila Howard had settled back against the wheel-well but she was looking out the back window of the van. Ciaran still had his arm over the seat.
“Who else from your mob are here in Ennis?” Ciaran asked.
Minogue focussed on him with difficulty. He began to say something but nothing came out. He tried to swallow.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he managed to croak. Ciaran’s eyes narrowed.
“Your mob,” he said, louder. “Your pals. Guards. Whatever outfit you belong to. Undercover mob.”
Minogue wondered if he dared lift his arm to look at his watch. What would Hoey think when he didn’t show?
“Are you deaf?” shouted the driver. That one, Minogue thought, as he heard the tone of a braggart keen to look tough, the one who had been drinking in the kitchen while his pal and Sheila Howard were…
“I don’t have a mob. I’m down on a holiday.”
“Liar,” said the driver. “This is your second trip. And you have another fella with you. The one with the black eyes.”
“What were you snooping around for?” Ciaran resumed. “What are you looking for?”
Minogue said nothing. The pain dulled his vision but he stared at Sheila Howard. He thought of her straddled on the sofa, this Ciaran rising and falling over her.
“You’re an undercover type,” said Ciaran. “Who’s your boss?”
“I’m me own boss.”
Ciaran sprang up, his knees on the seat, and let his arms down over the back of the seat. Minogue looked over at him. The pistol dangled from his hand but the Inspector saw the finger on the guard.
“Don’t play the fucking smart-arse with me,” Ciaran growled and waved the gun. “Who sent you? What do you know about us?”
Us, Minogue thought. He tried to calculate what he should say.
“He’s down from Dublin-” Sheila Howard said.
“Jesus, we know that.” Ciaran waved the gun again. “The Murder Squad. That’s a cover for something. What’re you really here for?”
These two had strolled into Considine’s pub after he and Crossan had been there ten minutes. Did Crossan…? Minogue’s thoughts were snapped away by fear then. For several moments his body merely registered the squeaks and the tyres’ whirr as the van travelled over the Burren road. Across his fogged mind images flared and disappeared back into his confusion: Had Crossan known?
“Ah, to hell with it,” said Ciaran. The van jiggled on a series of bumps. Ciaran pressed the pistol against the seat-back to steady himself.
“Look. It’s in your own interest…” He stopped, still searching for something in Minogue’s eyes.
“Fuck it,” he snapped. His face seemed to close up. “It’s your own look-out if you want to be an iijit.”
Minogue watched as Ciaran’s eyes went to Sheila Howard. She looked back at him and then returned to the window, her head and upper body swaying as the van took the turns. Minogue believed Ciaran had wanted some sign from her. He moved one hand down the wrist of the other. His watch was gone. Its loss shocked him and surprised him, bringing back the fear. There was something expert about taking his watch, he thought. Planning. He thought of making a break for the door and tumbling out onto the road, hoping for the best. Sit up a little and wait until they passed a house so that Ciaran would hesitate to use a gun. Forget the fact that houses were few and far between here. Minogue moved an elbow under himself and prepared to push his body up in stages. Just then the van slowed and left the tarred road. It wallowed bumpily and slowed as the driver eased it up a laneway. Bushes scraped along the panels once. The van turned sharply and stopped.
“Stay down on the floor,” said Ciaran. The driver switched off the engine
. Minogue’s confusion was burned away. Terror took its place. The insistent knowledge came back still stronger. Knowing what he knew, they would not let him go.
Hoey closed the newspaper and looked at the man behind the counter of Hogan’s newsagents. Should he tell him? He felt like laughing, it was so bloody ridiculous. Wait until he showed it to Minogue. He looked at his watch. A half an hour yet.
“That’s a wicked fog. You wouldn’t want to be out on the roads this morning, by God.”
He had gone to see Out of Africa with Aine and found the landscape behind Meryl Streep’s and Robert Redford’s faces contrary to what he had imagined Africa was like. Did you think it was all monkeys swinging, like in the zoo, she had gibed. Children with swollen bellies swaying in front of the camera, he had thought. People always unfortunate, winds whipping sandstorms over what had been grass, gaunt scarecrows carrying stick-limbed babies in the heat and dust. But that wasn’t a true picture, Aine had told him. You mean millions are not dying? No: the culture, the ruin that white people had brought to Africa. Slavery, colonialism, apartheid. Didn’t he know that our ancestor was probably an African, Eve?
“But sure, it’ll probably clear off when we get a breeze.”
Aine had gotten her last inoculation that afternoon, he remembered. She had showed him the needle mark: the cholera can be bad, she had said. There had better not be any Robert Redford types hanging around out there now, with or without the clap. The images from the picture receded as the memory of their row that same evening came to him. He felt a leakage of something cold into his chest and stomach. He didn’t want to think about it but he couldn’t help it.
If you’d only wait and give me time, I could get a leave and go with you. You’re joking me, you haven’t even been out of Ireland on a holiday, Shea. And, anyway, what could you do out there? You’re a Guard. They want teachers and what-have-you, not more men in uniform. I could visit. I’ll write and let you know, Shea. Maybe I need to be on my own for a while, a change of scene. For what? That’s none of your business in actual fact. I need to stretch me legs and do new things. There’s more to me than being a teacher, you know. There’s more to me than being a cop, too. You’ve changed, Shea. You really have. Over the last two or three years. I haven’t changed enough for you, by the sound of things. Don’t get like that, you’re like a spoiled child. I’m the way I am, I’ve always been different and you knew that. You never complained about that before. You used to say you liked that even. Look, Shea, let’s not fight. We’re two grown people. Things change, that’s all I’m saying.
Hoey opened the paper again. It was still there.
“Are you down from Dublin?”
Hoey was reading today’s copy of the Irish Independent. On page four, the features page, was a full-page article on Irish people working for charity organisations in Africa. Aine, her arms around two black kids smiling shyly, was herself grinning back into the camera. “Aine Healey, a teacher on leave from her job in Dublin, has made fast friends with these two youngsters in rural Zimbabwe.”
Hoey looked up from the paper. “How much is the Indo?”
Mr Hogan looked over the rim of his glasses at Hoey.
“Same price as in Dublin. Have you it all read?”
“It was the one page I was looking over again,” said Hoey. He laid a pound coin next to Hogan’s cup of tea. “See her? I know her.”
Hogan squinted at the picture. “Africa, begob. She’s helping them out in Africa. That’s great.” He looked up to Hoey and smiled.
“That’s the Irish for you. Where there’s trouble and famine, that’s where we go. We had it so bad ourselves with the Great Hunger, we’d never walk away from people in need. It’s in the genes, man. It’s the way we are-that’s what I say.”
Hoey took his change and stumbled back out into the shrouded town of Ennis. He stopped in a doorway and read it again. “They need us and they’re terrific kids. They really want to be in school… Yes, it took time to adjust but I fell in love with the people. They really need us… They have taught me so much… Oh, sure, I miss Ireland but not as much as I…”
Hoey’s eyes began to sting. He stuffed the paper under his arm and searched his pocket for hankies. His chest began to heave and he couldn’t stop it. He had no hankies but he wouldn’t go back into the shop in this state. Were the pubs open? Fuck! His shoulder scraped the wall as he fingered his eyes. He began to look at the shop-fronts, hoping to see a pub. He stepped out into the street to see better. The car grew out of the fog behind him. Hoey heard the squeak of brakes and looked around. The antennae were still waving as it started up again. Hoey looked down into the car. The face was familiar. Cuddy rolled down the window.
“Howarya, there,” he said. “Minogue’s pal, aren’t you? Wouldn’t mistake you for anyone else with the eyes there.”
Hoey registered the attempt at humour with a nod.
“Are you lost?” Cuddy asked. The squad car began to move off slowly.
“No,” said Hoey. “No, I’m not really.”
“Tell Minogue I was asking for him,” said Cuddy.
“All right, now,” came Ciaran’s voice from the open door. Minogue elbowed up and squinted against the light in the doorway. Though overcast now, the light seemed intense. The fog had retired further. He put up a hand to shield his eyes. Pain swept up to a knot behind his eyes.
“Out you come,” said Ciaran. The doorway framed Ciaran and Sheila Howard. Behind them in the fog loomed scraggy evergreens. Like so many cottages in west Clare, it was secreted in a sheltering grove of trees and bushes. Overgrown grasses lay in dense, saturated clumps by the door. Minogue looked from the gun to Ciaran’s face.
“Hurry up!”
Minogue stood dizzily on an overgrown laneway. Another surge reached the back of his head and he wondered if he might fall over. Sheila Howard had walked around to the front of the van and she stood there looking away. He took a step forward and felt the world tilting. Builder’s rubble, loose stones and disassembled scaffolding lay in heaps next to the house. Ciaran grabbed Minogue’s collar and pushed him forward. Minogue fought off the urge to turn or run. He hadn’t a clue where they were. He guessed afternoon but he could not make out where the sun was. His eyes hurt. Run for it? He faked a stumble and fell to the ground. Ciaran stood over him, pointing the pistol.
“No funny moves,” he said. He took a step back and motioned Minogue to get up. Minogue’s mind tried to work on his location again: up the Coast Road, near Lisdoon? Above Fanore?
“Get up!”
The driver came around the side of the van, straining with the weight of a box he was carrying. Seeing Minogue half up, he stopped and stared. The box slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the laneway. The driver swore and hopped about, his hands on one knee. Ciaran turned his head.
“Just leave it!” he shouted. “Leave it until we’re ready.” He turned to Minogue who was on one knee now. “And you, get up!”
A new slate roof had been put on the house and an extension had been added to the side. The stone walls had been carefully mortared and fitted to meet with the older building. Ciaran shoved Minogue toward the door.
“In the door there.”
Dread paralysed Minogue. The doorway was a black hole. The horror of being entombed rooted him to the spot. Ciaran grasped his collar again and pushed. Minogue raised his hand to prevent himself from falling. His hand slapped onto the door before he braced himself against the jamb.
“Get in the fucking door,” Ciaran growled, and pushed again. Better to fight, to run. Ciaran jabbed the gun hard under Minogue’s ribs, driving him headlong into the dim interior.
Was it four o’clock? Five? The darkness was unnerving him more and more. The boards covering the small window had been secured with crosspieces jammed and nailed into the old frames. He had heard some kind of cloth being thrown down on the outside of the door. Once he almost cried out, when the image of the house being set on fire wouldn’t go away. He strained
for minutes on end to smell any smoke. He had tried to persuade himself-and it had mostly worked-that the cloth was to keep any light from coming in under the door. Still, he could not banish the image which flickered in his mind and detonated the panic in his chest without warning: flames raging through the house, swallowing it, him trapped here as the burning roof came down. Stop imagining. Think. Would Hoey have alerted Kilmartin?
His body seemed to be soaking up cold from the cement floor. He felt it taking over his limbs, working at the flesh around his waist. He had tried to get out to pee but nothing had come of it. Pee in the corner, he had been told through the door. There had been coming and going, he knew, because he had heard the scrape of a piece of wood which had slipped under the front door when he had entered the house. He shivered again and the spasm ran right up to his chin, making his teeth chatter. His nostrils had become inured to the damp odour of the cement and dust. He was not hungry but he wanted something-a cigarette, even. He drew up his knees again. Something about Ciaran especially chilled him. Along with the anger there was some weariness or resignation that showed in his eyes. Did Ciaran believe that he couldn’t let him walk? Ciaran and whatever-his-name-Finbarr. Were they IRA or some splinter group? And how did Sheila Howard get herself mixed up with these two? Her legs, he thought, her empty eyes on his. The same woman he had seen and watched in the dining-room of the Old Ground, in her home. Crossan? Minogue stared into the darkness and whispered the name aloud.
Hoey wheeled around and glared at Crossan. The two men stood at the foot of the steps leading up to the front door of the Howards’. Hoey had been down to Minogue’s car. No keys, locked. No clue as to where Minogue might be. At least there were no bloodstains. He and Crossan had been through the yard, into the coach-house and sheds, out into the fields. Sheila Howard’s car was in the garage. Nothing else. He glared at the lawyer.
“This window,” said Hoey. “Come on, give me a leg up.”
“Aren’t you over-reacting again?”
