FIVE
Go the canal first, Tommy,” said Minogue. “They’ll hold Mullen down at Pearse Street. I want to have another look at the blind spots. The bridge and that.”
“Okay.”
Malone was rewarded for his aggressive driving by a succession of red traffic lights. It was a quarter of an hour before their Nissan was turning up from the docks toward the canal. On the canal bank at last, Minogue spotted figures in blue shirts to each side of the canal. He stepped out of the car and stretched. Fergal Sheehy, Sergeant Fergal Sheehy, in waders was perched on the lip of a squad car’s boot. Tagged plastic bags littered the boot. Minogue peered at some. Cigarette packages, a lipstick container. One held a condom. He eyed Sheehy. The sergeant closed his eyes and shrugged.
Plate-Glass Fergal Sheehy was stationed in Fitzgibbon Street and worked plainclothes. He specialized in street crime. Along with his nickname, Sheehy had gained some notoriety four years ago when he had disarmed a cornered knife-wielding pickpocket by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The pickpocket had very nearly bled to death. He survived to be charged with attempted murder-Kilmartin, Minogue remembered, suggested he be got for break and enter as well-and to initiate a suit for damages against Sheehy. The suit was unsuccessful. At the request of Kilmartin, Sheehy had worked on several cases in the last few years. Kilmartin had even pressed him to apply for permanent posting to the Squad. Sheehy had declined. His reason, the Chief Inspector had confided to Minogue, was that he preferred to leave his work in the office. An eye for detail and a patience which made him appear indifferent and even indolent had marked him as special for Kilmartin. Like many others on the island, the Chief Inspector had learned early in his career that Kerry people were genetically programmed with the ambition to be boss wherever they were and whatever they did. Kilmartin occasionally cited Eilis as proof. Sheehy was to be his pet Cute Kerry Hoor.
“It’s all been said, Matt,” Sheehy murmured. “Believe me.”
“That stuck, are we?”
Sheehy nodded.
“Unless you want us to take up all the bike wheels and the shopping carts and the tires and-”
“God, Fergal, you’re a saint.”
“It’s staked out in hundred-foot zones from the gates. There’s too much and there’s nothing at the same time. Look at the rubbish all over the kip. A holy show.”
A Guard stepped up from the bank with a comb. Minogue greeted him and returned his sympathetic nod. The worst site: contaminated, traffic, water. Futile work.
“But at least you’re outdoors, Fergal. The way God intended.”
Sheehy squinted at Minogue.
“There isn’t enough soap in all of Dublin to clean myself off after all this shite and rubbish.”
Minogue glanced over at Malone who twisted his lip trying to suppress a smile.
“Two of the lads fell in up to their waists,” Sheehy went on. “Man, you should’ve gotten a whiff off them and they climbing out. And the fucking language out of them! A fright to God.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t here so. Can’t be taking chances at my age. What’ve you got?”
“Don’t ask. Malaria, maybe. A lot of nothing. All soggy at any rate.”
Sheehy stood out from the back of the car and pointed down toward the bridge.
“We did a good long sweep up and down. A couple of places that may be-may be, I tell you, and I’m trying to be nice and polite about it-could have been heels being dragged. Couldn’t tell anything about any scuffle or the like. No effects that could go with her beyond a million bits of rubbish. Still no shoes or bag.”
The Inspector looked up and down the banks.
“All right, Fergal. Call it when you’re ready.”
Sheehy shrugged and shifted his weight.
“Another few minutes,” he said. “That’ll be that.”
Minogue walked down toward the bridge.
“Not like on the telly is it, Tommy.”
“Tidy and stuff, you mean?”
“Yep. The gun. The knife. The bad guy in the cheap suit. The good guy with the nice teeth and the winning smile. All wrapped up in time for the end of the show. What do you think?”
Malone held up his hands.
“Four days into the job? Me first active case?”
Minogue picked his way back up the bank until he was almost under the bridge. The water ran fast after its drop from the top of the lock. Bored teenagers, he thought, standing around here over the years smoking and drinking cans of lager. Worse, probably. He took a few steps in under the bridge along the ledge where barge- horses must have plodded. The noise of the traffic receded to a resonant sigh. He looked at the wall. There were initials and burn marks on the stones which formed the arch. No paint, oddly enough. Stone loves Jane XXX. Bohs are the greatest. Jacko had had, had wished he had had perhaps, sexual congress with Cathrine: he had not had spelling lessons from Catherine. Kimmage rules. The Doors. Were they big again? Lower down on the wall, on one of the largest stones, he spotted faint colours. He half-closed his eyes and looked again. Now it looked like a picture of a face. He bent over and studied it. No pattern now, no shape. Chalk? Whatever it was, it wasn’t paint. It could be years old.
He let his eyes follow the canal banks down toward the docks. If you kept your eyes up from the immediate surroundings, he thought, and if you ignored the stink off the water and the rubbish all about, and if you pretended that no one came down here to piss or to drink or to fight, or to buy or sell sex and drugs, and if you didn’t know that a woman had been battered and thrown in here or somewhere near here to drown-if you could forget all that- the view framed by the arch of the bridge was beautiful.
He made his way up the bank. Sheehy was marshalling the bags in the van, checking the labels against the diagrams of the site. He watched the Guards congregate by the van and the two squad cars. He helloed some of them and listened half-heartedly to their jokes and grumblings. The sky over Dublin had taken on the colour of milky tea. Haze hung under the trees’ canopy by the banks. The sulphury tang of exhausts mingled with the decay breathed up from the water and the weeds. Drivers continued to slow and eye the goings-on. One old man with a terrier on a leash stood on the far bank staring at the Guards while they took off waders and boots. The traffic was beginning to move again. Minogue watched a couple stop by one of the trees to embrace. Something erased their reflections on the surface of the canal. He looked down to see a floating island of scum take over the surface there. He waited for it to go by and restore the image but the floating mass seemed to be getting bigger, broader. The couple moved off.
Sheehy offered him a cigarette and asked after Kilmartin. Minogue read the smile as invitation to a yarn which would glaze the Killer’s legend into an even harder monument. He told him that Chief Inspector Kilmartin was in the pink. Sheehy gave him a wink. A Guard began to relate a story he had heard about prostitutes. Minogue looked over to the far bank. The man with the dog was still there.
He crossed the foot-bridge which said “Not for public use,” pausing in the middle to look at the rills cascading into the lock below. He eyed the dog for a friendly reception. Did dogs take on the character of their owners?
“Warm still,” the Inspector called out.
The dog didn’t reply. The owner looked myopically through his lenses at Minogue. He pulled on the leash. Minogue took in the long nose, the pouches under the eyes, the hair brushed back in a style of fifty years ago. Dubliner for sure, he thought: seen it all.
“I hear there’s a chance of rain though,” Minogue added.
“You must have come down in the last shower yourself if you believe that one.”
Minogue managed a smile. The old man adjusted his glasses.
“A bit late, aren’t yiz?”
“Late for what, now.”
“Like the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. What are you then, a sergeant?”
“They made me Inspector some time back.”
“So you’d hardly be patrolling the streets then, would you? To my mind, things went downhill when they took
