'Why not?'
'Well, we never met her. She was never introduced to us. In a formal way.'
Minogue's pessimism deepened. The boy had learned enough to be ashamed of them probably.
'I was just thinking, Sergeant Minogue. Doesn't the Bible say 'an eye for an eye?' Don't you think there's something in it all the same? Where's the justice even if the fellow is caught? Jarlath had a great future ahead of him with the business. Sure the university was just a general training. Did I insist he do accountancy or the like? No, I did not. 'Every lecture has something for everybody,' I told him. A liberal education as they say. Strange as it may seem, I believed in that.'
Minogue realised that he was probably the first and perhaps the last visitor to the house since the funeral. The man looked like a bachelor somehow. The place was spic and span, unused. Walsh's face held an intensity which was still disbelief as to how the world had fallen apart. Soon it would turn to anger. Walsh would want answers and no one would be able to provide them.
Walsh was fingering his lip now. His voice had dropped and he was staring at a print on the wall.
'The North. Well, that's part of it, I'm sure. Not directly of course but it sets the thermostat, you could say.'
He looked intently at Minogue and continued.
'They're not the same as us, Sergeant. Not one bit. They're a different race entirely… My suppliers sometimes ask things but I explain that it's like another world up there. It could be another continent. Still they ask. What about the vast majority though, I ask myself. They're trying to make a living and keep their businesses going, like the rest of us. They're the same as us in that respect. Unsung heroes I might say, the ones who put the food on the table and keep the economy afloat. Where's the justice in that though? Bitter people. Too much politics. We don't need that here.'
Minogue's mind echoed with 'vast majority.' He heard it often, usually to do with bad news. He felt weak in the company of this man, surrounded by his achievements. Walsh stood up and pocketed his hands. Minogue, no psychologist, recognised his chance.
'Mr Walsh. I'm wondering about your son's brief-case. It was stolen in the college. Did he mention it at all?'
'Matter of fact he did. I haven't told his mother at all on account of it being a present she gave him. I suppose no place is safe now, not even Trinity College Dublin.'
'Any strange phone calls or visitors looking for your son this last while?' Minogue tried.
Walsh looked carefully at Minogue, considering his answer.
'No, Sergeant. And your insinuations can stop at that point. You're trying to suggest that our son was a stranger to us. We made it our business to know what he did. We were interested in how he did and not just with the books. We knew our son. We talked and discussed things with him. If you leave here with nothing else aside from that fact, well that'll be fine with me.'
Minogue stood. Too far, he thought. Yes, this Walsh was a country man and no stranger to Minogue. Minogue had been meeting these men less and less over the years. He remembered a line of a poem but couldn't remember the poet.
'Will it be the bourgeois coma or the bully's push?'
Walsh had enough of the bully in him not to be comatose in the suburbs here. Yes, Walsh had the age-old dislike for the peelers and the law. Walsh led him to the door. Brass fittings caught Minogue's soupspoon head in passing. You're wrong, Walsh. Your son was a stranger to you because he was learning to know you too well. Familiarity…
'Thank you, Mr Walsh. I regret the inconvenience.'
'We all do our job, Sergeant. Good day now.'
Another bloody clumsy hint, Minogue realised as he heard the door clunk behind him. A cement statue in the middle of shrubs reminded him of a cemetery. Who had educated Jarlath Walsh really? Agnes McGuire, that's who.
Within a mile of the Walsh house, Minogue was faced with a choice. The Friday traffic was flowing south. Minogue's home was but three miles in toward the city. Couldn't he justify staying j out here rather than returning to the city?
At this same time, the playwright had executed his choice. He replaced the phone. Maybe, on reflection, he should have phoned the Brits instead of the Gardai. A car of a given make and colour would be worth inspecting. It would be going through Dundalk tomorrow. It wouldn't be exactly full of petrol.
Minogue pulled in beside a shop, aching for a cigarette. He sat in the car for a minute, listening to the engine. Then he drove off onto the Bray Road toward his work. On his way to the city centre, there were times when he couldn't remember how he had driven this far^ paying no heed to what he was supposed to be doing. By the time he reached Trinity, his mind had caught up with him. He was surprised to find himself parking there. He gathered his notes and checked the drawers. He locked the door behind him. He wrote a thanks, slipped the key into an envelope and sealed it. He walked under cooing pigeons at Front Gate and handed the envelope to a porter.
'And thank Captain Loftus for me. We'll be in touch,' Minogue said.
Instead of returning directly to his car, Minogue turned toward Allen's office. The heavy varnished door took his knuckles and offered nothing. Minogue put his ear to the door but he heard no sound. He felt relieved and disappointed at the same time.
In truth, Minogue felt washed up. Almost unknown to himself he was lying in wait on the bank for some moving thing to pass, something he couldn't predict or control. Like waiting for a bus after you've had a few jars, idly detached from things. The implacable closed door and the bird song coming in from the square made him feel silly and lost. Walsh was right, he'd run out of steam.
He gathered his papers better under his arm and turned to leave. Turning, he caught sight of a faint sliver of brightness under the door. He bent to look and noticed that a folded sheet of paper had been slipped under the door. Minogue fished it out with the end tooth of his comb. The note was from a secretary apparently, reminding Allen to phone Captain Loftus when he got back. 'When you get back Sun/Mon.' Minogue slipped the note back under the door.
Minogue explored his way to the back of the building. Turning a corner, he heard a typewriter. He knocked and entered. No, Dr Allen would not be in for the remainder of the day. Who was looking for him. Mr Who? Minogue. Had he an appointment? No. Well Dr Allen is very fussy about that. No less fussy than yourself, Minogue thought. Where could he reach him? He had rooms in college but he wouldn't be there either. How come…?
His lectures took him away at least twice every month. And where would he be delivering his next one? That's a private initiative on his part. Sorry for asking.
'Well, more power to his elbow. I'll be seeing you,' Minogue said to annoy her. A face on her like a plateful of mortal sins, Minogue thought.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Detective Garda Connors was trying to unbunch the large muscle group which comprised his arse. Connors welcomed the break from Kilmartin's company. Kilmartin had become morose and then angry by turns. Connors could feel Kilmartin's imploding anger and helplessness. The two killers were still at large. It looked like every single Garda in Dublin would be on the job following suspects around. Suspects indeed. Connors had drawn surveillance on an old-timer, a playwright, who had been active nearly thirty years ago. He had faded into the background more and more as the war in the North became a city war. The playwright hadn't been under regular surveillance for over three years. The file read like a story about a film star in decline.
Connors tried to remember some of the plays this fella had written. All with a nationalist bent or some bloody propaganda. Well, at least it was only play-acting. Maybe he'd be flattered to think he was being followed. He could boast about it to his cronies, be a fecking hero.
Connors' backside began to ease. He ordered another glass of Harp and looked around at the Friday afternoon crowd in the Bailey. Oh very poosh. More like a crowd of gobshites. And the women dressed up, laughing like actors on the telly. Mutton dressed up as lamb. Vixens, they'd take a lump out of any honest man in their path.
