The Coast Road (Matt Minogue Mysteries)

by John Brady

  “Okay. I think I get it.”

  “Perfect music, isn’t it? She did it all herself, the programming. Taught herself.”

  Another word appeared: Bríomhar. Lively, he thought. A good choice of word for the response he’d get were he to let out his thoughts about scented candles and chanting in sacred groves.

  He was hearing waves now. Then the flute died out decently enough, leaving only the wind. It soon fell back to the soughing he had heard at the beginning.

  “It’s only a prototype now, we get to say how we want the final version.”

  Names appeared one by one. The second last was Kathleen Ferriter.

  “Is that the Kathleen Ferriter I know?”

  “I decided to go with my maiden name. Just so people don’t get at you about it.”

  The screen was still now except for a glowing ‘Repeat’ button.

  “What do you think?” she asked. “Be honest now.”

  “I was kind of used to the Kathleen Minogue bit.”

  “Oh look at you,” she said and chortled. “I get it! Yes, I know what’s going through your mind. You think I’m running away with a cult, don’t you.”

  “You’re taking vows maybe? A new order here, this Bridget thing?”

  She ran her fingers through his hair and down over his forehead. The tenderness in her face looked too close to pity for his liking.

  “Okay,” he said. “Men have made a bollocks of things. Let the women take over?”

  “The church isn’t a priest,” she said. “Or a bishop – or even a pope. It’s people. We need a new day. A fresh start. Back to our roots. That’s how we picked the name.”

  He sat upright. His patience was holding up better than he expected.

  “Did you see Maura’s name? She went back to her maiden name too. She was actually – what’re those pictures you have there?”

  “It’s work, sort of.”

  “But that’s a nun. What work is that?”

  “It’s complicated. I think maybe we were sold a bill of goods on something. So I’m going sideways at it, see what I can find.”

  “But I thought you were working on that poor man out in Dalkey, the homeless man?”

  He rose, and he began rotating each shoulder in turn. Then he leaned in and clicked the windows closed. He left Kathleen’s page open.

  “I’m going to do a job in the garage,” he heard himself say. “A little bit of reverse engineering, out in my man-cave there.”

  “It’s not what you think,” she said. “That website.”

  “What do I think?”

  “I know you. You think it’s a holy roller thing. It’s not.”

  “Maybe it’s episode fifty-nine of the men-are-toxic-women-are-angels thing?”

  “Stop it. I don’t know why you come up with that sort of nonsense.”

  Feeling the chill of wrong words approaching, he headed them off with a smile.

  “Hope springs infernal,” he said. She held to her own tight smile.

  Closing the garage door behind him, he immersed himself in the comfort of its compound aromas: the lawnmower’s grassy presence, sawdust, fertilizer. He felt entitled to smoke, and just as entitled to open a can of Gösser.

  He let a few minutes go by. He didn’t push back against the usual thoughts. Iseult, crying quietly in some dilapidated farmhouse in the South of France. Iseult bravely trying to keep it all together, fighting off the realization that her husband was slipping away from her into his own depressive’s world. Iseult standing numbly in front of her canvas, unable to lift her paintbrush.

  He parked the cigarette and reached into his pocket for his mobile. He had put in the space before Iseult’s name to force her number to the top of his Contacts. He pressed Call, but even before he had raised the mobile to his ear, he had clamped his thumb on the End button. Who would it help, a phone call like that? Not his daughter.

  He swore quietly. It was colder out here than he had realized. He had another gulp of beer, and then he turned to settling his notepad on the shelf that housed his bits and blades for the power tools. He wrote the time, and then he wrote O. Larkin, and he dialed.

  The answering machine cut in before the first ring. He listened to the not-quite-English accent and swore quietly. He’d leave a message anyway.

  He had gotten his name and number out before a voice interrupted.

  “Wait a moment,” she said. “Let the machine do its thing.” He heard several clicks and a droning ping. “Who’s calling?” she asked.

  He repeated his introduction, lingering a little on the Inspector title.

  “But why are you phoning?” she asked. “Why this hour of the evening?”

  It wasn’t irritation: it was a coldly factual.

  “Well I want to introduce myself first, I suppose.”

  “At eight o’clock at night? Are you working at this hour?”

  “It never stops,” he said.

  “Calling my home though?”

  “Would you prefer I call you at your office? Tomorrow morning, say?”

  She didn’t reply right away. He took a quick drag of his cigarette.

  “Is this normal procedure, calling someone at home at this hour – what am I saying, this is London, and you’re in, where, in Dublin?”

  “Dublin it is. But I should tell you that I’m at home. I had been thinking of phoning you earlier on, but I decided to wait.”

  She was fumbling with something. A pen and paper of her own, he guessed.

  “Look, what’s your name again – how do you spell it?”

  When he had finished, he waited again.

  “I wanted to talk with you concerning your brother, Padraig.”

  “Well I assumed that.”

  He studied his cigarette for several moments.

  “This is going back a bit,” he said then. “And I need your help. Your advice. Some items have come to light concerning your family.”

  “My family? Surely you’re aware that I am the only one now.”

  “I am. But I mean your extended family. Your uncle.”

  A fleeting image of Murphy from the picture flared and dissolved in his mind.

  “Your uncle Peter,” he added.

  “What about him?”

  “A priest, wasn’t he?”

  “Well obviously you know the answer to that.” Her accent had slipped a little.

  “This is bizarre,” she said. “I have to say that. Quite bizarre. Why on earth you’d phone me, and why should I take your word that you are indeed a Garda…? I mean, if this is a legitimate enquiry – what’s that sound?”

  He held the can clear of the bench and let the last of the foam drip on the floor.

  “I’m at home,” he said. “Multitasking.”

  “Well as I was saying – ”

  “Ms. Larkin? Excuse me butting in now. I have limited alternatives. That’s why you’re hearing from me this hour of the day, from the garage of my home.” “Pardon? Your garage?”

  “Exactly. Here in Kilmacud. In all its glory.”

  “I know Kilmacud, I think. Well, I did.”

  “That’s grand. It’s raining here. Spitting, as we say. Have you rain in London?”

  “Rain? Here? Well now, not at the moment, no.” There was a different inflection in her voice now. He wanted to believe that it might be a thaw. The malty scent funneled into his nose as he put the can to his lips.

  “You’re the lucky one so,” he went on. “It’s the kind of rain that is reserved for Dublin only, I suppose. That kind of rain.”

  “But you are not from Dublin though,” she said. “I can tell that much still.”

  “A serious enough allegation that.”

  “Irish charm doesn’t work here, you should know.” Minogue took another sip.

  “And I also have to tell you, Inspector Muldoon – if that’s your name and you are not some anonymous person whose number refuses to show here on my call display—”

  “—Don’t worry, it
’ll show on the log at BT. Same system as ours here.”

  “You are an expert in this, are you?”

  “Far from it. But I was in the Technical Bureau here for a good number of years. The section I worked in went by the dramatic title of Murder Squad.”

  “Telling me that, is that your way of applying pressure here?”

  A swig of beer had trapped wind on its way down. He couldn’t summon a belch.

  “It is actually,” he said.

  “Well it fails in that task.”

  “If you’d prefer to go the official route, you need only say so. It’s grand by me.”

  “What official route would that be?”

  He flipped up the sticky to read the address of the local copshop.

  “It would be me putting in the request, into the Met – do you actually call them the Met, or is that just the telly?”

  “The police?”

  “Just so. I’d be requesting them to have a chat with you. Over at, let me see…Lewisham. The High Street? Yes, that’d be your local, I suppose. But I suppose they’d offer you the chance to chat at home first, naturally.”

  He held his cell a little away from his ear, and he took a long drag on his cigarette.

  “This isn’t pressure you’re talking about,” she said. “It’s intimidation.”

  “That’s not the plan here, Ms. Larkin.”

  “It isn’t? Can you spell your name exactly now, your rank, and your number?”

  “You have my name already. Now I have questions for you. It’s up to you how and where you wish to answer them, or to refuse to, of course.” He braced for the click.

  “I’m asking for your help in filling in some blanks here,” he said.

  “Blanks. ‘Blanks’ is code for…?”

  “Information we don’t have. Gaps. Some people might read these gaps as something else. They might see willful concealment in there.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you are on about. Is that what the Gardai are like nowadays? I don’t remember them being paragons in my day either.” “Ms. Larkin. What happened to Padraig?” The sound from her end sounded like a pen being planted firmly on a notepad. “I beg your pardon?”

  Her return to that English accent jolted him a little.

  “Your brother,” he replied. “I’m asking you what happened to him. And I don’t mean how he met his end. I mean how he came to be the man he was.”

  The silence lasted several seconds.

  “Do you have any idea just how rude you are being here?”

  “I have read his details. He avoided the criminal justice system rather well.”

  “I’m hanging up. But I shall be— ”

  “—But I’m not interested in that. I am interested in why he did the things he did.”

  “This is deeply – deeply – offensive. I won’t participate in this.”

  He could do little else but dig in further.

  “Was it drugs? Me, I don’t think that’s the whole story at all. Though I don’t doubt for a minute but that they can tip a person over the edge.”

  “What are you saying, ‘over the edge’?”

  “Well, was your brother a child molester from birth then?” The sharp intake of breath was followed by an openmouthed sigh.

  “I’m having difficulty believing you actually said that.”

  “You knew about the Black Mass stuff he did, I take it. Or heard about it.”

  “We have nothing to discuss.”

  “And why am I only learning about your uncle now, by chance almost?” “What uncle?”

  “The one who was a huge success as a new curate in the parish next door to the one where you grew up. The ‘highly popular,’ the ‘much-liked,’ Father Peter. The one who was whisked away, and then showed up on the missions a few weeks later in some corner of Africa. That one, the one who died out there, out there in Kenya somewhere.”

  He held the mobile out again, and reached for the can of beer.

  “Do you have any idea,” she began, but then stopped.

  “Any idea of…?”

  “Of how hurtful this is? How unnecessary?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you heard me calling for vengeance? Complaining that no-one has been caught for what happened to Padraig?”

  “You’d be entitled to, I think. All I can say is that we’re trying.”

  “Don’t you get it?” Her voice had regained its firm timbre. “Tell me what I’m not getting here.”

  “It’s me you’re punishing,” she said. “Don’t you see it can’t undo what’s happened? That you’re not going to help anyone by threatening me?”

  “I’m not threatening anybody” was all he could come up with.

  “What happened, happened,” she said. “It was a tragedy, yes, and I hope that you catch somebody. But I didn’t commit a crime. I mean no harm to anyone. I live my life, and do the best I can.”

  “So what harm is there in telling me then? In talking about it at least?”

  “Talk? Talk does nothing. It only makes people go through it again.”

  He hesitated then, but the chancy moves had moved quickly up his mental list.

  “Your family was devout, I believe.”

  “Is that an observation? It’s an impertinent one then.”

  “You know what we have going on here, with the church. On the news, lately?”

  “Lately? It still surprises me when people use the word ‘lately.’”

  “Your father—”

  “—Leave my father out of it.” He let a few seconds go by.

  “He was a judge. I read the testimonials to him. A fine man.”

  She said nothing.

  “So it baffles me,” he went on. “It really baffles me, I have to say, how such a close and loving family could have such a thing happen.”

  “Do you…” she said, and paused. “Do you have even the slightest idea of how outrageous you’re being?”

  He made a quick survey of the dead flies in the cobwebs by the light bulb.

  “People talk a lot here,” he said then. “Sure aren’t we famous for the yapping we do? But I’m not sure we really say that much. Do you know what I mean?”

  He scrutinized at the crest on the can while he waited, but she made no reply.

  “There’s no end of cleverality and wit and humour and God knows what else. But I’m not at all sure we listen though. Do you know what I mean about us here?”

  “I think I see your point. But why you’re telling me this, I don’t know.”

  “Well like I was telling you, I’m out in the garage here. I’m actually smoking a cigarette. Yes, me, a grown man, well able to figure things out. So I’m ashamed of myself for this. But habits are hard to break, aren’t they. The more you focus on something, the harder it is to get by it. What they call the ironic effect, in psychiatry. Have you heard of that?” Her response was a quiet, toneless murmur.

  “I’m a chemist by training, not a shrink. Or a neurologist.” He began a slow patrol up and down the garage floor. “My point is that maybe we haven’t been looking at the right things, in the right places. Going so hard at the obvious that we miss things. It happens in a lab too, maybe?”

  “It can.”

  “Ah. Well tell me something now. Why don’t you come back to Ireland at all?”

  He could hear her moving about now. He prepared for a return of her indignation. But a cold, almost resigned, tone had come into her voice.

  “You tell me something instead. Did they coach you for this? Or did they pick you because they thought you could do this on your own already?” “Coach me for what?”

  “Don’t you have psychologists, consultants now? All the police do, surely.”

  He stared at the crest on the can again.

  “Nobody asks me to make a phone call like the one I am on right now. And for damned sure, nobody can ‘prep’ me for one either. You’ll pardon that extra word there.”

  “Really.”<
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