The Coast Road (Matt Minogue Mysteries)

by John Brady

  Minogue switched on the point-and-shoot. He still wasn’t up to speed on all the buttons and options, but he found the macro. Then he set the flash.

  “And have the Guards, the other Guards I mean, seen these snapshots?”

  She shook her head. There was something in the slow shake that he didn’t like.

  “Taking a picture of a picture,” she said. “I’d never think to do that.”

  “It saves me having to take them away.”

  He continued to rearrange the snapshots out on the table. When he had them separated, he did a test shot. Glare from the glossy finish had ruined it. He turned off the flash. The lens dithered and buzzed as it focused. The sound of the shutter reminded him of a sly card-player laying down a trump. He went to Replay, and zoomed in. The last photo was a mess – muddy, soupy colour, pools of glare. The others would do.

  “I’ll need to get the names,” he said to her. “To go with the faces.”

  The blue-grey eyes didn’t blink.

  “You’re asking me for names? Is that normal?”

  “It’d be helpful,” he said, evenly. She drew one of the snapshots closer.

  “Padraig and Seán and Davey, the three musketeers. ‘I’m named after a beer, Sister!’ Davey says. ‘Up ag’in it from day one!’ Is that true, was there a McArdle beer?”

  He might have to relocate her accent south. Midlands, lake country?

  “There was, unfortunately,” he replied. “I’d have to say it’s best forgotten too.”

  No smile. He slid his camera into his pocket.

  “The Guards spoke to him,” she said. “Poor Davey, he was petrified.”

  “Those men are regulars here, you say. Which of them are here now, today?”

  “Neither of them,” she said. “Not so far. I haven’t seen them for days.”

  Minogue looked at the faces again.

  “Padraig couldn’t take people,” she said. “But Davey often got on his good side.”

  “What’s the story with this Seán Walshe? He’s a big lad, I’m thinking.”

  “Seán,” she said, carefully. “Seánie has what you might call a short fuse.”

  “How short would ‘short’ be?”

  She glanced at him and let go of her collar a moment. She quickly closed it again.

  “Could you give me an example maybe?” he pressed.

  “Well I forget that it’s to a Guard I’m talking.”

  “With all due respect, Sister. I don’t think I’m hearing an answer to the question.”

  Several moments passed before she spoke.

  “If it’s facts you’re talking about, and information, well then – no.”

  He made an effort at friendliness in his tone.

  “Mr. McArdle is not a suspect in the matter,” he said. “He’s been alibied, and it’s held up – so far, anyway. Are you suggesting that maybe that alibi won’t stay that way?”

  He let a few seconds drag by. Her voice had turned formal when she spoke now.

  “That’s a matter that is well beyond my expertise now, I’d have to say.”

  “I see. You were talking about the fact that he has a short fuse?”

  “Well he can be impulsive, Seánie can. But I’ll leave it at that, I think.”

  “It sounds like you knew Padraig’s ways somewhat,” he said then, putting an edge to his tone. “His comings and goings, that class of thing.”

  “I suppose I did,” she said. “But Padraig wasn’t one to share his thoughts.”

  “There would be things about him that you’d know, I hope, things that might have escaped others maybe. Hence your contacting the Commissioner?”

  He hadn’t expected the broad smile. It quickly gave way to a rueful version.

  “I’ve thought about that, the last little while,” she said. “And I decided I couldn’t let it go by. Even if it comes across to a Guard as stupid, I said to myself.”

  She seemed to be waiting for a question.

  “Or interfering,” she added then. “So here’s the thing, why I used the word ‘stupid.’ I really have nothing to offer – I mean I don’t know anything. So why did I pick up the phone? I felt, well I felt like Padraig was getting lost.”

  She sat more upright, and she studied the photo again. “Ignored,” she said. “I think I must have read too much on the Internet.”

  “The Internet,” he said.

  “Well you could laugh, I suppose. An old nun on the Web? But we do. Somebody mentioned that website, Facebook. So I looked, and I thought, well there’s an Ireland that I know. Yes, I did, and was I surprised. I shouldn’t say that, maybe.”

  “Shouldn’t say…?”

  A smile rippled across her face. She seemed genuinely embarrassed.

  “Are we allowed to do politics these days? People think we hand in our brains when we take the veil or something.”

  He gave her a disbelieving look.

  “All the goings-on, I mean,” she said. “The economy, the politics – all the madness that’s taken over the place the past, I don’t know, thirty, forty years? I was away for that, you see. But the old truth lives: there’s more to life than money. You see?” He doubted this brand of rhetoric required any input from him. “So that’s what I mean about the Facebook part. That people do care, and that there is still an Ireland. It might be a bit worn around the edges, but it’ll come back now that we’ve hit the wall with all this materialism thing.” Her expression set into something more serious again. “Money and all that is one thing,” she said. “But now at least we can return to seeing what’s important, can’t we? The soul. The immortal soul.”

  The ardour in her voice made Minogue even more determined to keep clear of these shoals.

  “Would you have known where Padraig was,” he asked.

  “Any given day?” She shook her head.

  “You knew about the King of Ireland rigamarole though, I take it.”

  “Rigamarole?”

  “His beliefs. His walkabouts.”

  “I did. I used to wonder if it was some story he told himself. Something to do with his own life, to buck himself up. Did you know he came from well-off people?” “I’m only beginning to learn about him.”

  “Well maybe you’ll know more about him then than I do soon enough.”

  “I’m hoping you knew him,” he said. “Well enough to get us moving again.”

  “Ah,” she said softly, in a way that Minogue knew would only irk him more if she were to repeat it. “You mightn’t know what’s real, or not real, for men like Padraig.” He let his pencil roll down his notebook and come to a stop. “Sister.” He waited until she made eye contact. A fold had appeared between her eyebrows. “There’s something that I’m not getting. Maybe you can help me out? You’ve told us that you think more could be done here as regards investigating Padraig’s death.”

  “His murder, yes.”

  “Yes,” he said. “His murder. So here I am. The photos are a start, thank you. But I have a question for you, and I’d like you to think about it before you answer.”

  He paused to let her know that he had a Garda-model stare available if needed.

  “Is there something about this matter you’ve discovered? Something that you’ve maybe forgotten to tell us before?” There was none of the hesitation he had expected. “That’s a policeman’s question, I’d have to say to you.” She was making a poor effort to smile. Her eyes had gone more grey, but there was a troubled cast to them. “They’re the only variety I have,” he said.

  “I must confess,” she said, and sat back. “Right after talking to Joh – to your Commissioner, I was mortified. ‘What am I to tell these Guards?’ I said to myself.”

  She drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a quiet, controlled sigh.

  “But John said that you’d have the right approach.” This was getting him nowhere. He looked toward the ceiling.

  “Well, you have friends in high places I daresay,” he said. He wasn’t sure that she’
d get it, but then she threw her head back in quiet glee.

  “Don’t we all,” she said, and blessed herself. “If only we knew it.”

  The mirth evaporated in an instant. She fixed an earnest look on him.

  “Look,” she said. “These lads might look like hard cases to you, but actually they’re fragile, wounded. But not the kind of a wound that you might see on the outside.”

  Minogue wanted to head off any detour into Mother Teresa territory.

  “Which is not to say that one of them couldn’t cause damage, though. Is it?”

  Her gaze slid toward the wall. She seemed to be considering his words.

  “I have the feeling that this thought has crossed your mind a fair bit. Has it?”

  She said nothing, but made a bleak, resigned smile. His annoyance with her was beginning to swirl again. All right, so she had been on the missions. But did she imagine that the country hadn’t changed in her absence? That she could pick up a phone and have Guards at her beck and call? Tell them what suited her, hold back what didn’t?

  Well okay, he resolved: if a nun had X-ray vision, then a copper had his nose, didn’t he. This copper here in front of her sensed that something was nagging at her. She was tough, and stoic, so fair enough, he wouldn’t condescend to her. She needed to be told the score. Part of the score was telling her that this country wasn’t a convent yard anymore. It wasn’t some classroom of kids under the commanding glare of a nun.

  He pondered for a few moments how he’d put it to her. What are you holding back here, Sister? Or: Have you found out that somewhere amongst these broken people you want so much to protect is one, or more than one man, who killed Padraig Larkin?

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to make things worse for these lads. But the law’s the law.” The firm tone had returned to her voice.

  “I understand. But law and justice aren’t always on the same road, are they?”

  With that, she drew in her breath, and like the farmer that Minogue imagined her father had been, she placed her hands on her knees and levered herself abruptly upright.

  He was being dismissed?

  “You’ll phone me when these lads show? When you know where they are?”

  She made no reply, but lifted the card he had given to her, and studied it. He wondered if somewhere in Sister Immaculata’s world, he had not quite measured up. Maybe he never would. Maybe no-one would.

  “No squad cars,” he said. “No uniforms, no sirens. Just a chat.”

  “You’d be involved yourself, I hope, would you?” The tinny drone from the television and the clashing plates surged back with the opening door. Too late he realized that this little room had been a refuge from the smells that now fell on him again. His nose was already trying to close itself. He quickly scanned the faces for any from her snapshots. No McArdle that he could see, no Walshe.

  “We’ll do what we can,” he said.

  He was at the door before he remembered. He crossed the floor back to where she had left him. She was sitting, listening to one of the men.

  “One more thing if you please,” he said after she had finished. “One ‘JJ Mac’?”

  “Ah, JJ. A bit of a character, JJ.”

  “A character.”

  She answered his unstated question with a stoic smile.

  “Is there anything you think he could help us with?”

  “If JJ would only help himself,” she said. “Ah, I shouldn’t be saying that.” “You mean…?”

  “His heart’s in the right place, that JJ. He told me he wanted to do a piece on us here. This was back before Hallowe’en. He even had a chat with some of the lads, I think. Yes, he was here one day and I was away. They’d put talk on anyone, some of our lads here, just to feel normal. Nobody will say a word to them when they’re out roaming the streets, you see. Someone told me he was chatting awhile, or more listening. Just to get a feel for what they go through, I daresay.”

  “Was Padraig among them?”

  “Well, I couldn’t tell you now. One of the lads said he was, all right.”

  She paused to allow a smile its fuller expression.

  “That’s a compliment here. Someone else – Seánie, no doubt – said that he was spying on them.”

  “Spying.”

  He heard her issue a soft sigh as she waved away the word. “‘A government inspector,’ I think Seánie decided. ‘Out to get them.’ It’s par for the course, I’d have to say now.”

  She threw him a quick glance.

  “Confidentially now, that, do you see?”

  “I do. So what came of his visit, McCarthy?”

  “Who knows, now. It didn’t go over well with the newspaper people, the editor. But fair play to him, I suppose. He wanted to try, at least.” “To try what, exactly?”

  She frowned and glanced obliquely at him.

  “Publicity,” she said. “That’s the name of the game, isn’t it? PR?”

  “PR?”

  “Of course! For Disciples here.”

  The voice – the tone – reached back decades to zap his nunfearing amygdala.

  “We’re not iijits,” she said. Her eyes had come alive with a smile. “We have to play the game too. We have to build cred, so when the cutbacks hit, we have a chance. We need people to buy into our efforts here – local people, County Council, everyone.”

  “To buy in?”

  “Oh yes. I had to learn the lingo quickly myself. ‘Render unto Caesar,’ as Our Lord says. I thought JJ could help us with our profile. To humanize us, for the public.” “What did he come up with?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. Her smile held, but it had a rueful hint. “‘Maybe later’ they said to him. The last I heard from JJ was him saying that he kicked at it a bit more with them, but he hadn’t much to draw on. It sputtered out, I expect.”

  Rising from the chair, she made a sudden grimace but quickly wrenched it away.

  “Well you likely already know JJ in some form,” she said. “You Guards in general, I mean.”

  She held out her hand. She had a strong, even combative handshake. Oh well. Saints, supposedly, were difficult people by definition.

  “God bless,” she said on an intake of breath, and then she smiled. “We’ll be seeing you again, please God?”

  Chapter 10

  Malone had company back at the station. This Sergeant Fitzgerald, head of detectives at the station, was on the south end of his forties. The tufts of dark hair peeping out of his shirt collar reminded Minogue of one of those men he’d spot on a beach, one who’d cause him to wonder about evolution. He took Fitz’s easygoing manner to be a screen. After all, this wasn’t the local Garda station in Ballybejases: sergeant of detectives in a Dublin area station was not a post for sleepwalkers.

  Malone was asking him about the area’s luminaries. Fitz had eased himself back more against the door jamb, his eyebrow curling up in response to Malone’s dry slagging.

  “Sure we could phone Bono,” he said to Malone. “Tell him you’re here.”

  He turned to Minogue.

  “I was just saying to himself here, to Tommy, to hop down to the office proper, and use the terminal there. Log on, and file away there to your heart’s content – or bang on my door, why don’t you, and use that one.”

  “Thanks,” Minogue said. “And sorry about the short notice here.”

  “No bother,” Fitz said, and smiled. “Sure we knew the thing was in review. Glad enough to get to the top of the queue. Makes us feel special, like.”

  Minogue smiled in return. Fitzgerald scratched at his head then, and made a quick survey of the room. His gesture reminded Minogue of a farmer’s studied reluctance when he was close to settling on a price.

  “I’m only sorry we don’t have a proper Incident Room. A dedicated one, like.”

  “We’re grand,” Minogue said. “Rare enough to find one anyway. And anyway, you might need a bigger dose of crime here to get facilities like that.”

  “T
rue for you, by God,” said Fitz. “‘Be careful what you wish for,’ et cetera.” “Quiet enough here, is it?”

  “Well,” said Fitz, and shifted his stance a little. “Could be worse, I suppose. Oh yes, a lot worse. Public Order stuff, a lot of it. But that’s Dublin these days, isn’t it?”