at Agnes. It's his secret, he's working on it. It's something he'll be proud of. Jarlath brings a tape recorder with him to talk with Allen, but Allen says nothing directly. Jarlath may have tried to wear him down probably, hints, winks. Allen is under terrible pressure and tells Loftus. Loftus tells him it'll be looked after.
Loftus is the one who has checked into Allen. Allen's original name is O'Donohue and Loftus trips him up on what happened a long, long time ago. So, Mr and Mrs Walsh, these people severally and individually have helped to have your son murdered. Outburst of tears from Mrs, glares from Mr: did you have to be like this, Minogue?
'And did Loftus murder Jarlath?' Mr had asked then.
Minogue can't pick careful enough words.
'We know he didn't actually kill him. He has an alibi for that night. But in law, he did, because he helped arrange it. Allen will be on the stand to testify to that.'
'Who killed him…?'
'We don't know. Loftus is saying nothing at all. We doubt he'll even be induced to tell, if indeed he knows, at his own trial for capital murder. We think your son was killed by the same person who killed two Gardai within the last week.'
Mrs Walsh, perking up: 'And who's he?'
'We're trying to find out. We think he's American.'
Minogue, leaving, had felt the cold stare on his back all the way down the driveway.
'Well, you let them know we're continuing on the case. Doing our best,' Kilmartin said. Minogue shook his head. The case was technically open, but Minogue's papers had been removed, the office was being painted. Minogue wondered if Garda inspectors spent more than half their time worrying about the management of impressions for the public.
'Yes,' Minogue offered. Kilmartin was suspicious again.
'Doesn't that beat Banagher though,' Kilmartin went on. 'His prints are not on file with the Yanks. We're going through the airline lists now. My bet is he'll turn up to be a dud as regards the passport he came in on too. We have the pictures sent out, that's all we can do. Some of the lads thought he looked familiar, but they couldn't put a finger on it. Looked kind of Irish they all said.'
Minogue tried the stewed apple but turned it away after one spoon.
'Think he did it, do you?' Kilmartin said.
'Yesterday, yes. Today, I don't know. There's the temptation to shove all the pieces together, to tidy up, I suppose,' Minogue said in a conciliatory tone.
Minogue wanted to allow the unspoken intimacy to drift back to them. He made an effort to leave clear answers and comments for Kilmartin. The waitress banged their plates onto the trolley. She returned and plonked two cups of tea down. Minogue looked up at her, but she had turned and gone. Kilmartin offered his packet.
'Do you want a smoke?'
'No thanks, Jimmy. I'll try and steer clear of them.'
'And Allen, how long ago was it…?'
'He was thirteen at the time,' Minogue answered. 'He was babysitting and the parents walked in on him. I don't fully understand the wording from then, but I think it amounted to an aggravated rape on the child.'
'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' Kilmartin whispered with a grimace.
'So he went to juvenile court, but they didn't send him to reformatory. Took counselling afterward and never looked back since. That's where he got the interest in psychology.'
'That's not one bit funny at all,' said Kilmartin.
'It caught up with him,' Minogue speculated. 'The whole thing.'
'Like…?'
'His mother. Nothing he did was ever good enough for her. He couldn't be Irish enough for her. No wonder his Da died young. Allen, or O'Donohue, was left to her mercy more or less. It's no wonder he did what he did.'
'You don't believe that stuff about Irish mothers or parents in general, Matt, do you?'
Minogue didn't answer.
'What possessed that fella to be like that? I ask you. Couldn't he leave things well enough alone. I mean to say this hop-off-me-thumb helped to get people killed, do you follow me?' asked Kathleen.
Minogue was following a lorry on the road into Tulla. The hedges and trees almost met over the road. The ditch was full of grass and brambles. Small fields, stonewalled, secretive patching over hillocks. Clare: fields like a quilt.
They had passed the holy tree on the Limerick road, coins jammed into the bark, pieces of cloth tied to its branches. Minogue was daydreaming, waking, daydreaming. Words and verses had stayed circling in his head since he had woken up, thinking of his own parents.
Will you come out tonight, love
The moon is shining bright, love
His mother hanging clothes across the bushes from the haggard, air sweet and close on a May morning, the birds filling the air with sound.
'I mean. All this lu-la would never have happened. He must be a twisted man entirely. In Trinity College Dublin with them nobs. There one in the eye for that crowd. I'm glad Daithi and Iseult go to UCD, I don't care what they say. Where's your man from? Loftus is it?'
'He's Cork. Well-to-do, I suppose. A career soldier who should have stayed in,' Minogue murmured.
'They all want power, isn't that the be-all and end-all,' Kathleen asseverated.
'I suppose. Some notion of duty mixed in with an inferiority thing, I'd wager. A powerful mixture, that…'
'And he didn't budge,' Kathleen added.
'Even after your man being shot out in Dun Laoghaire,' Minogue said.
'Go on. Tell us a bit,' Kathleen said.
'Well. There was a watch on for this fella. Very brash he was, brazening it out by trying to get on the boat to Holyhead. It's not that he was stupid or anything. He calculated things, that's my feeling. But he got annoyed at some point.'
'How do you mean?' Kathleen asked
'Well, frustrated maybe. He shot that Garda Connors. Maybe they were hounding him.'
'Who's'they?'' Kathleen asked.
'The likes of that gangster, McCarthy. The old crowd. Maybe he just imagined it though.'
'Isn't it the strangest thing?' Kathleen said.
Minogue was half driving, half looking around, half thinking. There were cars behind now. One had a Clare flag stuck out the window. No sign of the Kilkenny mob; the Kilkenny Cats, a sharper crowd of hurlers hadn't been let on the face of the earth. The Clare goalie would have to do Trojan work today.
Minogue had smelled deep from a cattle lorry on the way into Portlaoise, They had been unable to pass for ten minutes. The smell was still with him. It had left a lingering unease which surprised him. He wondered if he had detected a fear in the animals, perhaps knowing they were on the way to be slaughtered. Minogue tried to laugh off the persistent memory still locked in his nostrils. Middle age, dotage-he tried all the sneers to keep himself in line.
By the time they turned off the Limerick road to Killaloe and the Shannon, he had let his efforts slide. Though rested and jockeying a desk for a week, he felt the strangeness flood through him again. He had the baffling notion that things had changed again, that old things had faded and been eclipsed by something new. It was like waking up to know something was gone but that something else was imminent, a rejoinder. Without looking at her, Minogue sensed that Kathleen's thoughts had gone elsewhere too. She stared out the side window at the drumlins, the hedges, the tight and secret fields. Worrying still, Minogue knew.
Within ten minutes, Minogue and Kathleen were in sight of the village of Tulla, home of the resurgent Clare hurling team. The overcast sky hung still over streets glutted with cars. Men with caps down over their eyes, dogs, children with ice cream. The pubs had just closed. Sunday hours. They'd have to go out the Ennis road to get parking.
'You should do this more often so you should,' Kathleen said. 'The rest is a tonic, isn't it? Does for the both of us.'
Minogue's thoughts edged onto irritation. He didn't want reassurance this way, people circumspect as if he were an invalid again. He couldn't even think of the questions he wanted to ask. The words fled away on him like
