time. Passed him a tenner for his family several times,' Keating said, squinting at his notebook.
'I wonder how much of the tenner she saw,' added Keating. 'The bottle of whiskey was no kindness to them.'
'But well-meant,' said Minogue. He was surprised to find himself leaning out to catch a fragment of Combs' personality, his open-handedness, lest it plummet to the ground after Keating's rebuke.
'But don't you think he's twigged that we're not here in Stepaside him about the weather? He must know about Combs,' Keating said.
'Travellers don't be rushing out to buy the papers or listen to the news, now,' Minogue cautioned. 'We can't assume he knows.'
Neither man said a word for several seconds. Joyce's grandiloquence was not a ploy to delude Keating and himself in particular, Minogue believed. Rather, his talk was the reflex of a man who moved warily around such prickly institutions of the settled Irish as policemen and publicans. The elaborate flattery and invoking of saints and angels was the language of a different century, a different mind. Joyce had adopted the wheedling way of the powerless peasant without a thought that he, no more than his forbears, could ever be any other person dealing with peelers. His whorls of self-pity and whining were the Trojan horses which carried an ancient and enduring hostility within. But that did not mean Joyce was lying.
Another burrowing notion elbowed its way into Minogue's attention: this odd acquaintance between a retired Briton and a traveller somehow fitted Minogue's picture of Combs. This surprised Minogue when he allowed the truth of it to settle on him. For the life of him, he could not backtrack through that fog, back to a clear and detailed 'Mr Combs,' which had to be somewhere in his head for Minogue to be able to think this way at all in the first place. Maybe it was those drawing in Combs' house, the signs of a local interest. A passion?
'I'll tell you this much,' Keating said quietly, 'he hasn't told us everything. It's a bit like a good yarn, you know, how decent Combs was to help him out and the rest of it. But he didn't go beyond that sort of thing.'
Minogue gave Keating an inquiring glance.
'I mean some substance to the man he says he knew. Combs,' Keating said hesitantly, as though the school toughs might jeer him after showing an interest during poetry class. 'Maybe he's telling us what he thinks we want to hear. I'm not saying that he's fibbing or anything. It may be that, like you say, he doesn't know it's Combs we're on about.'
'I think you're very shrewd entirely, Detective Keating,' Minogue said absently. 'But what way do you think we should go now?'
'I think we should tell him, sir,' Keating replied without hesitation.
'And watch very closely how he reacts?'
Keating nodded ponderously.
'And watch very closely how he reacts, sir.' spacebarthing
They had re-entered the room to find Joyce looking around with darting, bird-like glances. Now, he was perched on the edge of his chair… as though hunkering by a fire, Minogue thought. He seemed to be keeping himself taut by clasping his knees with his hands. Minogue knew Joyce didn't believe that Combs was dead.
'Ah, no. No,' Joyce whispered finally. 'He couldn't be. Sure didn't I call to see him last night?'
Minogue said nothing. Joyce seemed to be on the brink of a denial or on the very edge of blurting something out, but he was stopping himself at the last instant. At each surge, his body leaned forward slightly as if to breast a wave and out with his disbelief.
'Ye are trick-acting with me,' Joyce said accusingly. He would not look up from the floor now.
'We're not, Michael Joseph,' murmured Minogue. 'Mr Combs was murdered.'
'Ye're trying to get me into trouble.'
Joyce's voice had a rising tone of apprehension to it.
'Not a bit of it,' Minogue continued. 'We're going to find out who did it. And put him in jail for it. That's our job, do you see?'
'Someone is trying to do me a bad turn and bring me down,' Joyce mumbled. He looked up suddenly at Minogue.
'Trying to put a traveller away in jail, so it is. The whole world is up against the traveller,' he said slowly. His watery eyes had settled on Minogue's. Their new intensity showed that he had cast off the protective air of servility.
'You're telling me someone has gone and done away with a man that had the time of day and the decency to bid good-day to the likes of Michael Joseph Joyce, when there's thousands of people born and bred in Ireland would cross the road sooner than say good morning or good evening to me, or so much as walk on the same footpath as myself…?'
Joyce was almost keening now. It had an eerie solemnity to it. Minogue sensed that Joyce was beginning to believe them. Keating was visibly impatient.
'Listen now, Michael Joseph,' Minogue interrupted. 'Did Mr Combs ever suggest anything to you about his friends?'
'Friends? No, never did. He never mentioned a thing about them'? I couldn't help but think to myself that he didn't have any.'
'Men friends?' said Minogue. Joyce frowned.
'What are you saying?'
'Any idea in your mind that Mr Combs was a homosexual?'
Joyce sat back abruptly and stared at Minogue.
'That sort of thing? Men pretending they're women sort of thing? You must be joking. Mr Combs was a perfect gentleman, God rest him.'
'And he never so much as hinted anything to you in that line?' Keating asked quickly. 'Him giving you money and drink. What for? Didn't he want a little something for his troubles?'
'That's a dirty thing to say. And ye policemen?'
Tobin appeared in the doorway and pointed to Minogue. As good a time as any to leave Keating to do his work, Minogue shrugged. With a bit of theatre not totally alien to him in his domestic life, Minogue stood and addressed Keating.
'Detective Keating, would you carry on in my absence with Mr Joyce here? And Mr Joyce will furnish exact details and information about what he knows concerning Mr Combs. Are you with me on that, Michael Joseph?'
Joyce nodded. He rubbed his palm down his face and slouched back in the chair. He was sweating slightly. His face was even more lumpy and tired-looking.
'Every detail now,' Minogue added. 'Nothing left out.'
Joyce looked with a bleak apprehension as Keating rearranged his chair opposite him. He looked up under his lick of hair at Minogue, aware now that his performances might not derail these peelers after all. He nodded again at Minogue.
Tobin closed the door behind Minogue. He had a cigarette going, cupped in his hand behind his back. His tie was loosened and the top button of his blue Garda's shirt was undone. He had meaty forearms.
'Divils for talk, hah, Sergeant?' he said, producing a packet of Majors from his pocket.
'No thanks,' Minogue said.
'Once you leave them sitting on their own for a while here they get to being jittery.'
'You say there's someone on the telephone for me?'
'Oh, yes sir.' Tobin made for the stairs. 'You can take it in the interview room below.'
'Thanks very much, Garda Tobin. Now what can three hungry men here visiting the village of Stepaside do about a bit of grub? Nothing too substantial on account of it being half-way to the tea-time. A plate of chips maybe?'
He watched Tobin lumber heavily down the hall before picking up the phone. He listened to Eilis and then wrote the telephone number she called out.
'Moore? M-O-O-R-E?'
'Yes, your honour.'
While he waited for the hotel to switch him through to Moore's room, Minogue let a phrase circle slowly in his afternoon mind. Indecent haste. Could hardly say it to this fella though; he was just doing his job. As the bishop said to the actress? Someone had to do it, sooner or later.
