The Coast Road (Matt Minogue Mysteries)

by John Brady

  “You’ll sort that with them then, right? Tell them to do the next call different. Bring a nurse or somebody with them? It’s only common sense.”

  Minogue leaned forward in his seat while Malone reversed, and took in the McCarthy home again as it slid by.

  “Thinking of a little house-tour there, are you,” Malone said.

  “Matter of fact I was. But not with Larry fecking know-it-all Higgins staring through the window at us. So head to Dalkey. Meanwhile I’ll see if I can get hold to get this fella in Clontarf. Muldowney. Get more detail about McCarthy, if I can.”

  They were soon entering the roundabout and leaning into the curve that would lead them off toward Dalkey.

  “Still on hold?”

  Minogue felt no urge to answer Malone’s question. He continued his study of the houses they were passing. Working-class Sallynoggin had vanished the moment they had come out of the roundabout onto Glenageary Road.

  “McCarthy got on somebody’s wrong side,” Malone said. “Drugs. You think?”

  “Well, there’s history there, isn’t there. Can’t ignore that.”

  “Be interesting to find out where he went in, in the first place. The water, I’m saying – wait, what do I take after this next roundabout?”

  “Go through there, the left of those places, the Towers. Barnhill Road. And be ready to take a right turn. It’ll come soon enough too.”

  A rubbing sound came from the front of Malone’s car as he steered into the curve. Minogue switched to speakerphone, and rested his mobile on his open palm. “Won’t be easy,” said Malone. “Will it?” Minogue looked across at him.

  “Figuring out where he went in,” he added, cocking his head to listen to the car as it straightened again. “That bloke in the hit and run last year, remember? Down the Quays…? He ended up on Bull Island too. Took a while, but that’s where he ended up. They said he was probably floated around the Bay for a week, and then back in. Jaysus.”

  Minogue raised his hand and held it there, feeling the weight of the mobile. The magic spell he’d imagined, summoning a voice on the other end, wasn’t working.

  “When did McCarthy got the boot at that newspaper?”

  “Last month, give or take.”

  A small piece of Dalkey Hill slid into view. Malone was hesitating.

  “Over there,” he told him. “Go that Barnhill Road over there after the curve.”

  The speaker tickled in his palm. He switched back and brought it to his ear. After the introductions, he gave Muldowney – ‘call me Mal’ – the minimum to go on. Muldowney seemed to expect more, however.

  “Dalkey,” he said. “But it’s Dun Laoghaire station for the family, isn’t it?”

  “I was just on the phone to them. McCarthy’s name shows on this case we’re looking at here. He’s peripheral, but we’re doing review. Tell me, do you think maybe McCarthy was put into the water, in your part of the world there?”

  Muldowney’s tone told Minogue that he had been expecting the question.

  “The way I was told,” he said, “is that everything turns up on Bull Island. The tides, the time of the year?”

  “Well McCarthy’s in the system, I understand.”

  “That he is.”

  “What’s out your way for a man with certain wants in the line of drugs, say?”

  Muldowney made little effort to dress up the irony in his voice.

  “Well that’d be for the Drug Squad team here, they’d be the ones to know.”

  The tone was burning through another layer of Minogue’s patience.

  “I’m out on the road,” he said. “So I don’t know much about McCarthy on the system. Would you mind…? The last entry for him, was it recent?” “Seven years ago.”

  The forebearing tone again. Maybe there something in the air out in Clontarf?

  “But what does that say these days,” Muldowney went on. “Maybe he figured out how to stay under the radar.”

  “There’s always that, I suppose.” He let the pause go on.

  “Tell me something,” said Muldowney then. “Are you anything to the fella used to be in the Murder Squad there?” “The same one. I still get the migraines.” He heard a low, insincere chuckle from Muldowney. “I know it’s early days now,” he said to him. “But have you anything you could offer on him yet? Anything at all?”

  “I wish I could. This one could shape up to be a migraine style situation too.” “Slim to none then, so far?”

  “You said it. We’ll see what turns up with the science, won’t we.”

  It was a talent that Minogue could admire in the abstract, this tacking close to the shore of open sarcasm. He imagined Muldowney for a moment then, muttering to someone in the station after he would end the call. Junkie washes up half-eaten on the sand there at Bull Island, the middle of Dublin fecking Bay, and bejases someone call us the same day, thinks he can get chapter and verse all the way up to courtroom verdict…? “Discovery was the day before yesterday, I heard?”

  “It was. The proverbial man walking his proverbial dog.”

  “Grim, the condition of the remains?”

  “As grim as you’d want. Features were not intact.”

  “And were there marks on him? ‘Signs of trauma,’ I was hearing.”

  “Well it looks like he was clobbered all right, right across the forehead. A long mark gone black, one of the lads said. Even with the rest of the, er, effects, you’d see it. So if I were a betting man – which I’m not – I’d be expecting lungs full of the old H2O.”

  Minogue had been thinking about the long grey strand that made up the Bull. It’d be windy, cold as hell, with the white Bureau tent flapping and straining to be free.

  “And no ID on him?”

  “Not a flitter.”

  “Personal effects? Money, keys…?”

  “None listed here. You could to add robbery to the deck, if that’s to your liking.”

  “How did you get to the final ID on him, you mind me asking?”

  “Well we put him into Missing Persons, his X-rays and all. They can be quick – if there are records waiting there for persons we throw at them. Not McCarthy though, he wasn’t even on their register.”

  Muldowney’s voice had taken on a slight sing-song note, as though he were explaining complex matters to a child.

  “But they were able to lift two prints off him, two that were close to fifties. That got the ball rolling. Ident threw twenty-seven at us for those partials. So down the list we went, made our contacts, and came down to McCarthy and one other one. Thing is, Ident was pointing at McCarthy for us as the likely. But it can’t be 99.9 percent, can it. We finally got hold of the other fella, in England now, and that was that. McCarthy went to the 100 percent. We’d gone the PPS route for an address on McCarthy already, but it was a dud. So we set up the next-of-kin contact.”

  “Who’s at that PPS address?”

  “Ah well – there hangs a tale. McCarthy hadn’t been at the listed address for a long time. So we got hold of his employer – his former employer, I should say. A newspaper place? I got a bit out of him chatting. According to them, McCarthy walked. He hadn’t actually gotten the sack. ‘Well could he have walked back in and sat down and kept working then?’ That when he pulled the curtains on me. ‘Oh now that’s a hypothetical, and in the interests of confidentiality.” Blah blah blah. I hadn’t told them at this stage, that McCarthy was in a drawer over at the morgue.”

  “No partner?”

  “Haven’t found one yet anyway. One’ll turn up eventually, I suppose.”

  “Wasn’t there talk of him going to Amsterdam?”

  “There was. That came from them there at the newspaper. So, I finally let the boss there in on the reason for the call. It fairly shook them, I can tell you. So he opened up a tiny bit again. Now this is all conversation, right? I’m only going from notes – I haven’t even entered them up on the system yet. Okay?”

  “That’s my life in a nutshell,” said Min
ogue. “But whatever you can do…”

  “It turns out the last they heard of McCarthy was a phone call, some travel agent wanting to talk to him about a flight he’d booked. Asking him to call them back ‘in regards to a payment issue.’”

  “Travel agent? Doesn’t everyone under the age of ninety book online these days?”

  “You’re asking me? The girl, the office one there, she thought nothing of it. She just passed it on to the boss. But he didn’t try to contact McCarthy. McCarthy had gotten touchy the last while, he said. Hard to approach. Letting things slide, making demands, doing no-shows even. Wondered if he had money troubles, or ‘issues.’”

  “Issues. That covers a multitude. Issues was code for…?” Another fake chuckle from Muldowney.

  “Oh I asked him straight out. Drug problem you mean, says I. Backed off again. ‘Oh well we need to consider whether this is proper, with confidentiality and…’”

  “You had another address for him by this stage though?”

  “Well that’s the thing,” said Muldowney. “He seems to have been living out with his Ma. McCarthy worked off his mobile a lot, picked up his pay at the office.” “But no mobile to be had, at all?”

  “Right. But we’ve started looking for one. He had a contract, but it was cut off a while ago. Money troubles again? He went the PrePay route since, and we got the number from the newspaper crowd there. We put in the requisition with Vodaphone.”

  “On the ball there, big-time.”

  Muldowney’s chuckle was less insincere this time.

  “Do you think,” he said. “Well we’ll see. Early days yet.”

  “You mind me asking now,” Muldowney said then. “Here’s a question for you. Do you miss the old days at all?”

  “Piking hay back on the farm, et cetera?”

  “No, no,” Muldowney replied quickly, his impatience revealing itself at last. “The whole Murder Squad thing I mean.”

  “Hard to say. Hard to say.”

  He heard Muldowney swallow a long yawn.

  “I’m much obliged,” he said to him.

  “Nothing to it. You have my number there?”

  “I do.”

  Minogue felt sure that the pause was tactical.

  “So, you’re there in Dalkey, are you. Dalkey, County Dublin. A lot going on there out your way, I daresay?”

  Minogue couldn’t really blame him for letting slip some sarcasm at last.

  Chapter 25

  Minogue opened his eyes, to find that Malone was watching him.

  “What,” he said to him.

  “Nothing. I’m just waiting, that’s all.” Minogue closed his eyes again and resumed rubbing.

  Whatever had been unfolding in his mind had no shape to it. McCarthy floating out in Dublin Bay and then finally returning to shore. Larkin passed out in the long grasses by a ruined church. Walshe screaming about AIDS. Immaculata’s singing. Seán Brophy sitting at home, the curtains drawn. “The phone call,” Malone said.

  He stopped rubbing. The yard of Dalkey Garda station was still all about him, the soft ticks were still the Escort’s engine cooling. He hardly remembered any of the drive back in from Sallynoggin.

  “The one at the newspaper,” he added. “The one from some travel agent?” “Go on.”

  “Sexton Blake.”

  Minogue looked up from his notepad. His doodles had turned out to be mostly triangles. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s fake. There’s no ‘travel agent.’ It’s part of the gig, whoever did for McCarthy. To me, it’s amateur hour as well. It’s not the real deal, like gang work.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Okay. Let’s say McCarthy’s really in the game, or back in the game at least. Dealing, carrying, driving, couriering, running a crack pad – whatever. But if they think he’s got his fingers in the till somewhere? Owing money that he’ll never get back, and they think he’s going to fold on someone and go grass to us…? A decision is made, and that’s that. They don’t care about trying to buy time, or covering up. Plenty of fellas are itching to make names for themselves, so they’ll do it in broad daylight. They get their starring role, and the boss gets his rep, his cred. Cost of doing business to them.”

  “PR.”

  Malone tapped out a quick drum roll on the steering wheel. “Call it PR if you like, sure,” he said. “Who’s going to mess with someone that thinks nothing to send someone out to shoot you in public, in the middle of the day?” Then he gave Minogue a side glance.

  “But there’s more than one way to go at it, though, isn’t there?”

  “If McCarthy staged it all himself, you’re thinking. Disappearing act.”

  Malone made another drum roll.

  “You can’t hide in this town long, I tell you. If you’re a junkie, you’re going to be out there. You have to. You lose the run of yourself, you can’t think straight. You’re going to be seen somewhere, or you’re going to be making phone calls to somebody, and that somebody will be talking to somebody else, and…”

  “I hear you.”

  Malone stopped his shoulder rolls, and began staring intently at the windscreen.

  “Terry done it, you know,” he said.

  “He done – he did what?”

  “He tried it once, the disappearing act. He thought he could go cold turkey.”

  It seemed to Minogue that the words were being addressed to someone else.

  “Took exactly nineteen hours with Terry, to be back in circulation. I actually checked in detail. Dublin’s a small place for certain people.”

  He gave the steering wheel a sharp, decisive tap.

  “Went back like a homing pigeon to the same track. That’s what they do.”

  Track? Minogue thought for a moment before placing it: the streets where the dealers plied their trade. A fleeting memory came to him of driving down Abbey Street with Malone, not long after the funeral. Malone had been scanning faces there, searching amongst the restless people who themselves watched every passing car and face.

  “‘See what the science says,’ I suppose,” Minogue said. “On Mr. JJ Mac.”

  Malone dead-panned him.

  “‘See what the science says.’ You like saying that, I bet. Brings you back to the Squad, right? But it was you that the Killer sent to crowbar the Lab, remember.”

  Minogue’s mind had already had its run, skipping through the template of routines for cases arriving in to the Squad. Calls in to the mobile company for the victim’s activity log. The Press Office, preparing the appeal. Setting up rota, zones for the area canvass. That hour or so – ‘the early Mass,’ as Kilmartin used to call it because it was short – with Mary at the State Pathologists to get them started. The calls to Seán Brophy looking for a jump in the forensic queue. Statements, second interviews.

  The yard lights were fizzing. One clicked and poured a weak orange light across the yard. Malone took out the key, and looked at his watch.

  Minogue was out first, the ache for a cigarette keen. He tapped his pockets for his camera and his mobile. Another light fizzed and snapped on, then a third. “You’ll be up in a while, right?”

  Though Malone hadn’t meant to be condescending, Minogue still felt a nip of disapproval. He found a spot by the door of the canteen, and lit up, and waited for someone to pick up the phone at Disciples. McCarthy had talked to some of the clients there. Now it was time to find out who.

  An answering machine was his reward for letting it ring four times. He knew that he would not be leaving a message, he heard it out anyway. The voice was warm, the words carefully enunciated. Immaculata’s lilt slipped its leash at the end: ‘God Bless now.’

  The back door of the station squeaked open, and after a few footsteps, the silhouette gave way to Sergeant Fitzgerald.

  “How goes the battle?”

  “Steady enough. Working on strategy here a minute.”

  Fitz came to a stop and looked about the sky a few moments.

  �
��The evenings are coming on quick these days,” he said. Fitz was a rugby fan, Minogue saw from the Garryowen slogan on the mug dangling from his fingers.

  “This is the week the roster starts to bite,” added Fitz. He tried and failed to suppress a shiver. “I don’t mind the 2 to 10, actually.”

  “Have you young ones at home?”