The Coast Road (Matt Minogue Mysteries)

by John Brady

  Minogue expected Malone to put in his oar in defence of his home city. No go.

  “Yep,” Fitz went on. “We get the usual closing-time dramatics. But who doesn’t? A fair bit of thieving here, I have to say too, gougers going after the big houses. Lots of well-to-do people here, as you probably know. So we’d be busy in that regard. And vandalism, well it seems to come and go, in waves. Again, a lot of it’s the young crowd, drinking and running around.”

  “Affluenza,” said Minogue. “The kids these days, money, and that…?”

  “‘Affluenza’ – I like it. I’m going to use that one.”

  “Many drug offences here?”

  “Compared to say Dun Laoghaire back the road, it’s low. We have a few Sharons and Darrens here though. ‘Darren the baron,’ like.”

  Minogue got the reference to skangers, but not the nobility. “Baron?”

  “Drug barons. Well, former ones, okay. Ones with good lawyers.”

  “Ah.”

  “Of course they’ve ‘diversified.’” Fitz released his airquotes slowly. “All arm’s length, since Criminal Assets began tearing into the feckers.”

  “Do you see much of them?” Malone asked.

  “Nah. But you’ll see the wives there every now and then, double-parking the old Range Rover while they pick up their kids from school. Or at some hen-party there in a restaurant, comparing their bracelets or their tans or the like.”

  “You keep an eye on them though, do you?”

  “Well we are aware of them, yes. But we’re only on the edge of things, to be honest. We’d be falling in line with what the big planning says. The big ops.”

  Serious Crime Squad, he meant. It was more irony, more sarcasm, Minogue felt.

  “Tell you the truth now,” Fitz went on, rubbing his spine on the door jamb in a way that reminded Minogue of a cow against a fence, “day-to-day, we’re more put-lights-on-your-bike here, or sign-your-passport-forms. Local, like. Not that it’s easy now, or anything. We do a lot of checkpoints too, the drunk driving. It’s steady enough really.”

  A cushy number too, Minogue would have said – if asked. Maybe even a wheeze.

  Fitz slid upright, absent-mindedly shoving his shirt-tail more under his belt.

  “So now you have it,” he said. “Just to say hello, yes.”

  “Good man,” Minogue said. “We’ll be getting up to speed here now.”

  “At it already,” said Fitz. “Fair play to you. I don’t envy you, I have to say.”

  Minogue shrugged. A thoughtful expression had come to Fitz’s face.

  “There was a week back then,” he said. “The Larkin matter? Well it was like a beehive in here, people buzzing all over the place. The GBCI team, go-go-go – no let-up. But that’s what they’re about, I suppose. The forty-eight hours rule, isn’t that what they say?”

  Minogue put on his neutral expression. “It’s not a hard-and-fast rule,” he said.

  “Twenty-three plain clothes at one time,” Fitz went on.

  “The half of them worked out of the van, the Command Post van there eventually. Tight quarters.”

  Minogue let his eyes sharpen into a stare. Fitz got to the hint.

  “Sorry, yes,” he said. “Now: you’ll be wanting the evidence room – ah, I see you beat me to it. Great. But be sure and keep a window open. You’ll know what I mean when you open one of those boxes, let me tell you.”

  He paused by the door and turned.

  “Oh, I meant to ask: do you want that chat with the assigned officers today?”

  “We’d hardly expect that right away. But if there’s a chance…?”

  Fitz winked, and nodding toward the files now stacked next to Malone, made a slow, sympathetic nod. He paused in the doorway.

  “A nice sandwich place there near the Castle. Italian?”

  Minogue listened to Fitz’s footfalls receding while he eyed the boxes that Malone had already retrieved from the evidence room. They were the new boxes, more like suitcases than anything else. German made or not, he had heard that these so-called Secure Evidence Enclosures had come with cheap, bollocky locks. He leaned over one, weaving his head to get by the glare of the fluorescents overhead on the polycarbonate window. He saw a date from last week next to a Garda Somebody’s signature.

  “‘A nice sandwich place. Eye-talian.’”

  Malone’s talent at mimickry hadn’t slipped. He unwrapped another stick of gum, flicked the ball of foil in the air, and caught it with a studied carelessness.

  “That was a snooping visit,” he muttered. Minogue hunkered down by the boxes.

  “That was a colleague being helpful,” he retorted. “This is a normal practice.”

  “That a fact. Well I say it’s a piss-on-the-fence visit. Territorial.”

  Minogue found what he had hoped, a folder ‘Disciples.’ He drew it out.

  “Listen,” he said. “We’re on the same side. Did you know that?”

  “I say Fitzie was checking sound levels. We should look for bugs.” Minogue stopped reading the list and looked over at him.

  “Now. Have you located this Mac fella? JJ Mac somebody. McCarthy, yes.”

  “Not in the raw, I haven’t. Not yet. But I found his record.

  You want?” “Fire away.”

  “Done first in the early Eighties for importation. He tried to bring in cocaine – and get this for Mastermind at work here – he’d stuffed it into picture frames. Picture frames? Anyway. Came in from Amsterdam. Thing is, he didn’t do time for that. Looks to me like he went over, and gave names for suppliers over there. His name shows up in incident reports right through to…let me see…six years back. Associating with knowns, attending on knowns. He was pulled in a few times, invited to assist.”

  He paused and eyed Minogue. He didn’t need to voice his doubts out loud. Minogue knew that ‘Invited to assist’ ran the gamut from easy money to dire threats.

  “He lodged complaints,” Malone went on. “Tried a suit, said the Guards assaulted him. It took four years to get through the system. Went nowhere in the end though.”

  “That was it for him and the justice system then?”

  “No. Two charges, late Nineties, but the charges were dismissed. Handy, right?”

  “Very handy. How’d he wangle that one?”

  “Guess. Yeah, I found the fella who worked him. He’s Sergeant in Howth now.” “Worked him?”

  Malone gave him a glazed look.

  “McCarthy grassed on someone we wanted. All arm’s length, and well-put-together, this Sergeant told me. They wanted McCarthy staying in place, so they waited to get him clear of any pay-back from his cronies.”

  “Lovely, I’m sure. Is this McCarthy still assisting the forces of law and order?” Malone shook his head.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “It’s not showing in the system. But you know, yourself.”

  Minogue did, but it would be a hell of a job to find out. Drug Squad detectives in every division across the country had their own networks of touts and hangers-on, a shifting, ragged tribe made up of addicts and parolees and misfits. “Cork man, McCarthy?” he asked.

  “No way. He’s a Dub. Just up the road, in actual fact, Sallynoggin. The guy’s in his fifties, but home address is his mammy’s. Sounds like Loserama to me.”

  “You can’t raise him at work? No mobile?”

  “Well here’s the thing,” Malone said. “I phoned the paper, South County. They’re cool on him. ‘Mr. McCarthy worked on a temporary basis. He is not currently on staff.’” “And what does that mean?” Malone started a stretch.

  “Means he’s not working there. And they like it that way, is what I’m hearing.”

  “What, he got the sack? Dirtied his bib with them?”

  “They wouldn’t say. ‘Confidentiality’ yeah yeah yeah – Blaah. But they gave me his mobile. It only goes to the machine. I ended up getting an address from the MT.”

  Motor Taxation office, Minogue realized. Malone’s stretch ended
in a low growl.

  “So I ended up talking to his mammy. That was something. She’s got to be ancient. So yeah, he lives there, she says, but he’s away. Away where, says I. Amsterdam, says she. ‘He has to report for his newspaper.’ She doesn’t know what the hell it is though.”

  “Amsterdam. Could he be back to old tricks? Maybe he never stopped.”

  “I have no clue – yet. But he’s got his mammy living the dream. She thinks he runs the country or something. But say he’s tweaking, and he’s out of money…? That’d fit. You want me to keep going on it, see if I can get him showing on a flight list?”

  “The sooner we get to him the better, yes. Use him, or get him out of the way.”

  ***

  Fitz’s warning had not been exaggerated. Even with the window pushed open so far that it dug into the paint, and maybe even bent the fittings, the penetrating reek had blanketed the room. Minogue had tried to ease himself into the job by going for what he had hoped would be the lesser assault on his nose and his senses generally – the box that held not-on-the person effects and belongings.

  The old history book and the falling-apart map had come from Larkin’s hideaway. They had all the signs of being obsessed over, with smudges and stains that flowed together. But a musk had risen from the box even before Minogue’s cotton-gloved hand had settled on the polythene bags within. He dragged the table as close as he could to the window, but the moment the first bag was opened, he knew they were in for it. He had struggled to come up with what it reminded him of: old vinegar, milk gone sour in the car on a hot day, that Italian cheese… But always, the unmistakable smell of something charred. Even Malone was taken aback.

  “How old you reckon that book is?” he asked.

  “The Sixties, it looks like, but I haven’t read it in the report yet.”

  “Talk about boring-looking. Isn’t it?”

  “You were never a history fan that I recall.”

  “Come on now, boss. Even the pictures are boring. For a kids’ book? Even I know enough about Vikings to say that there should be something decent-looking here. Swords, and fighting and all that. And horned helmets too, right?” Minogue pulled the gloves tighter.

  “So this stuff here says he had the mentality of a kid then?”

  “It’s more complicated, I’m thinking.”

  “Well at least the map is grown-up,” Malone said.

  Minogue placed the book back in the box. Pausing then as he refolded the map, he let his eyes wander over it one more time. Those marks still meant nothing to him.

  “Jaysus,” Malone muttered, and began looking over the other boxes. “That stink isn’t dying down, is it? Did we close them up again right?” The phone interrupted his search.

  “Fabulous,” he muttered. “Our first official call-in?” Minogue placed the map alongside the book and the other effects taken from Larkin’s cave. A sweet tooth, or a kid’s palate, for the chocolate and the crisps and the allsorts – even fruit pastilles, for God’s sakes. When had he gotten that rice wine? Make sure he remembered that when he went to the files. Sweets weren’t all that he ate, of course. A can opener, well-used. A sturdy dessert spoon, and alongside it a fork with a tine bent in a little; a pound shop knife with a fake bone handle. Paper serviettes: were they instead of toilet paper…? More cigarette papers, and two boxes of matches, wrapped in a plastic bag.

  He listened to Malone asking about other airlines. Then he echoed something he was being told and he let his biro fall onto the pad of paper, unused.

  “Well?”

  “No sign of him yet,” said Malone. “I’ll try the ferries next. Would he be going through England if it’s Amsterdam he’s headed for?”

  “Who knows. Relatives, friends – maybe he’s on a bit of a caravanserai.” “What’s that mean?”

  “Taking his time. Dropping in on people.”

  “People? Gougers and blags, you mean. Some ‘journalist,’ this fella.”

  Minogue secured the lid, and made sure the lock was aligned.

  “I’d like to know if he ever left planet druggie in the first place,” said Malone, his voice trailing off. “Or did he keep up that grassing career he had back then?”

  Minogue had no answers for him. It took him a few tries to get the lock to slide home. The gloves hadn’t helped.

  “That one’s ready to be signed back in,” he said to Malone. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. I forgot something in the car.”

  “They’re in your pocket,” Malone murmured. He didn’t look over. “You put them in earlier.”

  Chapter 11

  It was an hour after Minogue had come back from his smoke before the cold draft in from the window had finally won out over the remnants of the smell. Levering the window closed, he discovered that he had indeed done something to the mechanism when he’d pulled it open so wide before. He stood by the window, let his thoughts drift a little.

  He was soon up on the Hill, with glimpses of the Irish Sea far below, and between the leaves the perfect blues and whites of a June day. Wait: that was fantasy. June had been the wettest on record. So, had Larkin’s foxhole kept out the rain? He let himself imagine Larkin sitting near the dripping mouth of that cave of his. Larkin would hardly be meditating. Could he stay fixated on this Viking raiders kick all day? There was no point in trying to guess what else would have found its way in to occupy Larkin’s thoughts. The weather would have figured surely. As much as it had wrecked the summer for everyone else, it had also played havoc with Larkin’s walkabouts and the haywire sentry duty thing he did. Did he read the paper, listen to the radio, watch the telly? Had he any notion of the crisis out there, the rage and foreboding that had seized the country?

  He noticed that Malone was well into a bubble now. It was half the size of his face already. For some reason, he gave up on it.

  “You know,” he said, after he had chewed it back in. “I never actually thought about that much before. Not at all, come to think of it. Being nuts, I mean.”

  “Don’t you mean mentally ill?”

  “Right. It just struck me, going through the reports there. This Larkin guy is probably in his own time zone. Back to childhood or something, right? Does he notice anything of what’s going on at all around him?” “I was just thinking about that.”

  “And has he got any idea of time at all? He can’t be doing his patrolling thing all the time, can he? What, Vikings in the morning, and then Normans in the afternoon?”

  He snorted softly then, and dismissed some thought with a toss of his head.

  “Now that’s funny,” he said. “Maybe now is when we need the likes of Larkin.”

  “What do you mean? Too deep for me there, I’m afraid.” Malone abruptly stopped chewing.

  “Wasn’t Larkin going around the place making speeches? Shouting about invaders, and robbing and pillaging? ‘Run like hell, here come the Vikings!’ Something like that? But think about it. Robbing, pillaging…? Banks, builders, bail-outs…?”

  “Letter to the editor,” said Minogue. “Better yet, add it to that Facebook page.”

  “Whatever. So, how’d it go with that nun one out there? Sister What’s-her-name – Sister Act, whatever. Is she happy, now that she got her say with us?”

  Minogue realized that he didn’t have a clear answer. “Not so good?” Malone pressed.

  “Actually, I left the place wondering if maybe something’s bothering her.”

  “Bothering her? There’s a good one. But that’s nuns for you, isn’t it?”

  Minogue felt a strong impulse to just agree. Malone would never get the nun thing. Just like the dog-watching-television look he’d give when Minogue used a word of Irish, nuns for Malone were just another weird holdover from an Ireland that had passed. No offence, as Malone would say. It wasn’t about the twenty years’ difference in their ages, or a Clare culchie at odds with a Dublin jackeen. It was a case of living in different worlds.

  So what chance would Malone have then of recognizing
any part of the world that Immaculata lived in, one of souls and glory and God and…?

  “She was the one making noise and pulling strings, but she only wanted to vent?”

  “Maybe,” Minogue managed. “I don’t know.”

  “She put a spell on you,” Malone said. “That old nun. That’s what she did.”

  Before Malone could draw him in more, he had finger-walked over the file folders and pulled out the one he had been seeking, the very properly and very neatly labeled ‘Report of the State Pathologist.’ There were digital 8×10s along with the photocopies.