'Oh, I think I get it all right. I really should polish up my lines. You're quite right about the loose ends, I don't mind telling you. I'll be calling them straws soon enough. Where there's life…'
Allen, his arms folded, was displaying a patience which was not easy for him, Minogue realised. He was privately pleased that Allen should be uncomfortable.
'To follow up on every little thing,' Minogue continued. 'I need to convince my superiors and myself that this is not some lunatic random thing.'
Allen frowned.
'Yes. I suppose that I've hidden my light under a bushel, Doctor. Do you know that I hadn't even admitted to myself out loud in the middle of the day that this simply couldn't be a random thing? Well, there you have the gist of it. We can't escape it. I feel badly that I don't have some class of solid stuff for my superiors to digest, you know. It's like I can trace out elements, but I can't put things together in a way that appears rational. I'm waiting for a part of my brain to catch up with me,' Minogue allowed himself a grin before continuing.
'Yes. What do you call it, free association. Like we allow ourselves to believe certain things without even stopping to think. We don't know the half of it, do we? A hint here, a suggestion there. It's my experience that people are easily led, if you know what I mean.'
Allen eased himself in his chair a little.
'I think I follow you. Your technique for thinking out loud is a very good exercise. What I'm asking myself though is why you do it here.'
'Ah, there's a good one indeed, Doctor. I confess I was drawn to your office by the need of your insight. I mean that I think I'm up the garden path at the moment. For instance, the drug thing you mentioned to me. I'm stymied by it. Agnes McGuire knew nothing of his interests in that line. He wasn't the kind of lad to hold back, was he? I mean, that was almost a failing in him, the way he had so much to say, to offer. He was naive, like.'
'Well, he'd hardly advertise it to someone he wanted to impress, Sergeant,' Allen observed.
'So you put some store in the whole thing then?' Minogue asked quickly.
'Actually I'm almost sorry I mentioned it at all. You seem to be saying that it is a red herring.'
'Were you aware that an anonymous note had come to the college security officer, Captain Loftus, suggesting that Jarlath Walsh might be involved in drugs?'
'Matter of fact I was. I'll grant it may have coloured my interpretation of the questions he was asking me. Like I said, I'm almost regretting having told you about this in the first place…'
Allen sat back in the chair and folded his arms again. Then, like a cloud passing over his face, Minogue watched the idea come to Allen. Allen leaned forward slowly.
'I have the distinct feeling that you're not asking what you really want to ask me, Sergeant, but you're trying to provoke me in a way.'
Full marks, Minogue thought. Go to the top of the class. Did it really look that obvious?
Minogue said nothing. He watched what looked like indignation loosen Allen's manner. Finally he said:
'Doctor, I'm sorry if I left you with that impression. I wonder if I might ask you to sleep on the matter. Any small details or memories that come to you. A remark in class, a fellow student, anything.'
'You think I'm concealing something, don't you?' Allen said.
'Not at all. I haven't been able to firm up anything on this effort about the drugs, you see, and it's distracting me. I must be a very suggestible person.'
Not fooled for a minute, Minogue thought. Allen's gaze suggested a knowingness but an amused ambivalence too. Maybe he was working hard at not being rude, Minogue considered. Hard to blame him, with a detective who is flying by the seat of his drawers.
Minogue returned to the room he had been lent in Front Square. He determined to make an early day of it. At least it had stopped raining. Walking to the carpark, he found himself searching the faces of passing students for any signs of a son or a daughter. Were they all the same, students?
Climbing into the car, he assigned the day a four out of ten. Little remained of the rain except a saturated city and oily roads. Could it be that they might get a bit of sun?
Minogue wanted to sneeze but the sensation passed. A police car with sirens and lights going full blast went by him as he rounded into College Green. Damn and blast it, he thought. It would be better if he at least phoned Kilmartin's office and checked in. Go by the book. Minogue stopped at two phone-boxes in succession. Both had been vandalized. Reluctantly, he drove up Dame Street toward the Castle. Another police car passed him at the lights at George's Street, screaming away. Maybe it was a bank robbery, another one.
Outside Kilmartin's office there was no work being done. Several uniformed Gardai sat on the edges of tables, smoking. Minogue could hear the monitored voices of men out in the streets, patrolling. The voices and clicks drifted down from the dispatch room. Nobody in Kilmartin's office. Minogue strolled toward the dispatch room, nodding at several Gardai as he passed them.
'Inspector Kilmartin, lads?'
'He's above in dispatch, sir,' a Garda replied.
Kilmartin was sitting in a chair next to one of the girls. She was studiously concentrating on her earphones, nervous at his presence. He was smoking a cigarette. He stood up when he noticed Minogue and he walked over to the doorway.
'Did you hear about it?'
'What now?' Minogue asked.
'They shot our lads out in Blackrock. It's still going on. They got the driver, but the two fellas with the shooters are on the loose still.'
Minogue felt an approaching swell. He waited. Kilmartin was mooching about for someplace to kill the butt of his cigarette. His arm was wavering. Minogue felt light, cold. The day was transformed. Somehow the room looked lurid. It pressed in on him.
'The IRA or the INLA or whatever crowd, I'll wager. One of our lads was killed outright. The other one's alive,' Kilmartin murmured, still wandering around the room. Minogue was taken up with watching the girl's nervousness as Kilmartin paced.
'Only a pack of animals would react to a uniform like that. They have automatic rifles. The place is upside down so it is. They have a cordon up. The army and the whole shebang is there.'
'Where?' Minogue heard himself asking.
Kilmartin stopped walking.
'Out near the bottom of Merrion Avenue, near enough to Blackrock.'
As hard as he tried, Minogue couldn't get the taste out of his mouth. The fear was like cheese on his breath. It sticks in your throat, it actually chokes you, he thought. Smell it on your breath.
CHAPTER NINE
The tanned man replaced the phone and walked over to the window. His room at the Shelbourne overlooked St. Stephen's Green. He watched couples and children and old people enter the Green. They haven't a clue, he thought, about what goes on less than a hundred miles from here.
Parked cars glutted the streets around the hotel. No one feared that one might contain a bomb. No searches, no midnight raids by troops. The shops were full, the pubs were open. A soft city in a soft country. It even made visitors soft. People became so flaccid that they feared slight changes to their self-satisfied equilibrium. A decision had to be made within the hour. The danger was in over-reacting, of pouncing too soon.
The Green was swollen with trees and shrubs, all dense with the day's rain. The tanned man was thinking of Minogue. The photo showed a tall man in a cheap suit walking in the Front Square of Trinity College. Totally out of place. A redneck. There was something cautious and reluctant about the face. Soft, maybe. He didn't put his hands in his pockets walking. Certainly not stupid. Was it possible that this Minogue had a hidden sense of an adversary out there, that this boy's death was linked to another world of events? It didn't matter now, be pragmatic. Kill Minogue or not?
Why kill? To be sure. Take such a risk, just get this one crucial delivery across the border to prove he was right. The place would be crawling with cops if that happened. That moron playwright would leak eventually. Get
