'That isn't possible right now, sir.'
Kilmartin wheeled around and looked at him, then to Minogue.
'McCarthy is indisposed at the moment, sir. Fainted.'
Kilmartin stared at the nervous officer blocking his way.
'But we have a better description of this Yank, sir.'
'This hypothetical Yank, you mean. My money's on some gun-happy slug down from the North and Connors came on him.'
'And thinks the Yank mentioned something about the Shelbourne Hotel, sir.'
Kilmartin stepped back and looked to Minogue. Minogue noted the glimmer in Kilmartin's surly gaze now.
'Maybe there is something to this Yank then…' Kilmartin said.
'They'll know him at the Shelbourne, sir, if he's staying there. Nothing as sharp as a good desk-man in a fancy hotel, is there, sir?' the detective said, mollifying. His efforts did not break the cast of skepticism on Kilmartin's face.
Just before they reached Drogheda, a glaring sun appeared from between the evening clouds. It flooded the car with gold. It ran along beside the car, through the trees and the bushes, full on Agnes when they had fields to the west of them. Allen knew they wouldn't meet the sea again until close to Dundalk. By then it would be dark. Agnes' eyes were closed. He smelled a faint perfume in the car. The light set her hair a-dazzle.
Under the trees and in the ditches the shadows were broadening out. Already the sun couldn't get over a hedge here, the roof of a house there. Where the sun still hit fields, the green was luminous. They passed a tinker camp, the men on hunkers next to a fire. Every second or third vehicle was a lorry. The edges of the road were greyed by their passing. Sometimes Allen would find the mirror filled with the dinosaur front of an eighteen-wheeler, out of nowhere. When they stopped for petrol, the boy stood by the car looking over the inside, curious about Agnes.
'A good evening for travelling now,' he said. 'There'll be no rain.'
'How do you know?' Allen said.
'Oh sure we've had our ration for the week. Sure wasn't it a terrible week? Wasn't I drownded myself here several times in the one day,' the boy answered.
Allen heard Michael Jackson coming through the half open door beyond the pumps.
'I suppose,' said Allen, 'you might have something there.'
When Allen sat back in the car, Agnes said:
'Where are we?'
'Near Drogheda. It'll be dark soon,' Allen replied. 'God,' Agnes said yawning 'Drogheda. This is the longest road in Ireland so it is.'
Agnes looked out at the town. Already some streetlights were glowing purple, a prelude to the glare of yellowy light which disfigured towns all over Ireland. The sun was gone now. Overhead, puff carpets of grey clouds showed pink edges. The world was straining toward the west. As the car passed pubs, she saw shadows and soft lights in the windows. The shops and supermarkets were busy. Cars parked up on the kerb. Agnes thought of what Jarlath would have done tonight. He'd have suggested a foreign film probably. Reluctantly, Agnes would have agreed to go along. His callowness would make her feel guilty. Then she remembered that she had arranged to avoid a date with him by going to a friend's flat. She didn't want to go there, but she didn't want to encourage Jarlath either. An icy breath ran through her chest. To think that this could have happened. Was it only sinking in now?
She forced herself to think of Tuscany. A moon would be up. The stone walls would be warm. The sky would be full of stars. She could sleep in a barn or in the fields to be awakened at dawn. That was the way to live, sleeping from dusk to dawn. None of those noises at night, the sirens or the floodlights. La Luna, mi amore.
'Daydreaming, Agnes?' said Allen.
She glanced at him. What was different about him? She was too used to seeing him deliver lectures.
'A bit, I suppose.'
'You think being restless is exclusively the preserve of persons under twenty-five? Or perhaps a sign of early senility?'
'Aye. We all could do with a break,' she said.
Agnes thought of the city waiting for her, her bedroom, the telly with the news blaring out one more miserable day for the city. She had trouble remembering her father's face, seeing only the crumbling face of her mother. With no warning, her mother could be stricken helpless with crying. Watching T.V., reading a book or eating, her mother's face would suddenly contort. Agnes understood it was the commonplace things that could upset her, the vertiginous understanding that her husband was dead. No shaving soap in the bathroom, no other person in bed, no need to make sure the toast wasn't underdone. Agnes could comfort her mother again and again, but the weight seemed to increase.
Sometimes she felt that she was nothing, neither young or old. When would it all end?
The sergeant started up the car. Minogue sat in the front passenger seat. He felt Kilmartin's impatience as a palpable weight in the car. Minogue noticed that the sergeant's uniform was spotted with cigarette ash. His breath came across stale, penetrating.
'Well, the Branch didn't so much say it as let it be known,' Kilmartin began. 'They got a phone call. Somebody claiming that there's going to be a car going north with weapons aboard. Tomorrow. They think it might have to do with that other car or cars in that garage.'
Minogue contented himself with looking out at the dusk over College Green.
'They know the heat's on. I don't doubt they want results fast,' Kilmartin murmured.
'Yes,' Minogue allowed. He was tired. Drifting through the traffic made him sleepy.
'They've bought into McCarthy's Yank business anyway. I still have me doubts. Yank or not, you can't persuade me there isn't a connection though,' Kilmartin said.
'What?' Minogue said reflexively.
'The shooting in Blackrock. The place is gone to hell in a wheelbarrow. I can see the news tonight and the bloody headlines: 'Murderers still at large,' 'Armed men on the rampage in Dublin,' 'Gardai draw a blank in search for killers.''
'You think the same people are involved,' Minogue said.
'Maybe not the actual same people. Did I tell you we got a rocket about being alert for new types of weapons and a new network for getting them in? That's what has the Branch looking for this mysterious Yank and taking crank calls seriously. The fella who called described a car that sounds like the one in the garage. And the way McCarthy was hinting about arms smuggling got them going in a big way,' Kilmartin said.
'Well in anyhow: the other thing is a no-go. Those two fellas have gone to ground. Between me and you and the wall-' Kilmartin nodded in the direction of the sergeant's head, '-those shaggers are back in the North by now.'
'Signs on,' Minogue said.
'And as for the thing about the garage, well I'm sure we closed it down before anything became operational. I say it was a mistake to raid it,' Kilmartin said.
Minogue elbowed onto the seat and turned to Kilmartin. He was wary of the sergeant driving because he would be all ears, like anyone else, for an inspector's candour. Minogue imagined the sergeant going home to his wife: 'Wait 'til I tell you what I heard today… '
Minogue was surprised to find himself alert. He noticed that Kilmartin was frowning at him. The front gate of Trinity College fell away behind the car, as the sergeant wheeled the car around into Dame Street.
Minogue's knees began to itch. He strained further to look out the back window at Trinity College receding behind them. It looked magical, a place apart. The lights gave it an air of churchiness. Students emerged from the archway, out onto the centre of a city which Minogue believed had gone mad. They could always go back in to the squares and the classic proportions, to the insulated clarity of that island. Stone buildings and edged lawns answered the bullydom of Ireland. But no: that was false, too facile. Minogue was thinking as a peasant. In the week he had been in and out of the university, he had felt it had a vulnerability, despite the intellectual and physical architecture which held it in place. No amount of pretty young girls with baskets on the handlebars of th^jr old bikes could stop history. No amount of paintings hanging down over the dining tables could exempt this place from
