Minogue abed could not sleep. He brooded instead. Better than four out of five murders were done by family or acquaintances of the victim. More concern for Combs now that he was dead. Living like that, awaiting disposal in the morgue. Who to send this man Combs back to? He heard Kathleen lock the kitchen door and test it. There was some odd, scattery music coming from Iseult's room. New Music, they called it, music with lots of beats in it. It reminded Minogue of Charlie Chaplin caught up in a conveyor belt.
The house settled on itself with ticks and creaks. The weather forecast had said that clear skies would be coming their way overnight, all the way from Norway, if you please. Jimmy Kilmartin might finally and involuntarily have secured a wife's attendance at his bed with the turn he took. Minogue wondered if it wasn't a bloodclot and the hospital had fibbed to Maura. He imagined a clot finding its way up arteries, around bends, unknown to Jimmy until it struck. More sounds from the end of the day: taps being turned on, brushing from the bathroom. The toilet flushed. Water spiralled quietly, gurgling down a pipe somewhere. All the things you miss when you don't pay attention to them, he thought. What would Jimmy do now? He might lose a faculty if it was a stroke.
Minogue was still pretending to be asleep when he heard Daithi come in the hall door. His movements had the excessive carefulness of the guilty drunk. He dropped his keys on the mat in the hall. Minogue heard him swear in what his son would have thought was a whisper. At least Kathleen hadn't stirred.
Minogue stole out of the bed. He managed not to step on his slippers as he eased his dressing-gown from the hook on the door. He glanced at Kathleen's face in the pallid light from the landing. Asleep still. He remembered the creaking step near the top of the stairs and avoided it entirely. It was quiet downstairs now. Had Daithi gone out again? The hall light was still on. Minogue stopped and listened. He heard the steady, brittle tick as the pendulum swung on Kathleen's antique clock in the living room. A scratch then, surely someone lighting a match. Minogue opened the door to the living room. The lamp over the television was on now. Daithi was slouched in the armchair with a cigarette handy in the ashtray. His eyes were closed. Minogue smelled the beer-breath from the doorway. His eyes still closed, Daithi reached out for the cigarette again.
'Smoking in your sleep, is it?' Minogue murmured.
Daithi started from the chair, his eyes bulging. The ashtray clattered to the floor. Daithi scrambled after it. He lifted the cigarette before it had burned into the floor.
'Jases, Da, don't do that. You nearly gave me a heart attack.'
'I thought you were asleep. I didn't want you burning the house down.'
He saw in Daithi's eyes the glaze of tiredness and detachment which drink brought.
'Just having a smoke before I hit the sack,' said Daithi. He began stubbing the cigarette. 'But sure it's past my bedtime.'
'Hold your horses there like a good man. Now that we're here,' Minogue began, 'it's not often we get the chance, that our paths cross, I mean…'
Daithi's chin went down as he gave his father a baleful look. Minogue recognised the exaggerated gesture, even more ham coming from someone who had drink on them.
'You're not going to give me a lecture, are you?'
'I was half-thinking of it,' Minogue answered. 'But I don't want to waken the house. Can you keep your voice down?'
Daithi's face matched the conspiratorial whisper.
'Can't you do it tomorrow, the lecture?'
'It's not really a lecture at all. I just wanted to know… how you are and so on,' Minogue whispered.
He sat on the edge of the coffee table. He wondered if his anger was lurking about close by, somewhere he couldn't detect it. Daithi took the butt from the packet and relit it.
'Like, life? The meaning of life and all that?'
'Something like that, yes.'
'Well,' Daithi said as his eyes fixed on the thin rope of rising smoke, 'I'm studying for me exams so I don't make an ujit of myself and fail them again. Then a job, I suppose. Am I getting warm?'
'You're not an ujit at all.'
'I'm an ujit to the expen-to the extent, I mean, that I should have had me exam the first time around. It's a waste to be studying again.'
'Don't you learn better this time around?'
Daithi drew on the cigarette.
'I dunno. It's not exactly the most thrilling stuff.'
'Are you anxious for a change, maybe?'
Daithi blew out a think stream of smoke.
'Aren't we all, Da?'
Minogue almost stopped then. He felt the anger like a bull behind the gate, pawing the ground.
'Restless, though?' Minogue tried.
'You get fed up slogging away at the same stuff,' Daithi murmured, watching the ribbon of smoke. 'Especially if you let people down by not doing something right the first time around.'
'Who's sitting in judgement here? You didn't let me down at all. Nor your mother. You're too tough on yourself. A harsh judge. Did you ever read any of that Scott Fitzgerald fella?'
Daithi shook his head.
'The Great Gatsby. Lovely stuff. Nick says this: 'Reserving judgement is a matter of infinite hope.' Nice one, hah?'
'Maybe I should have done the artsy-fartsy stuff like Iseult does, or Pat.'
'The psychology, is it?'
'Yes. All you have to do is write a load of bullshit and they won't fail you. It's easy for them. There's no right or wrong answers.'
Minogue thought about that for a moment. His son blew a well-formed smoke ring across the room.
'Did you get to thinking that maybe you'd have liked to try some of that stuff instead of what you're at now?'
Daithi's snort quivered a smoke ring hanging in the air between them.
'Does it really count in the end?'
'In the end of what?'
'Jobs, the future. The real world. I mean, does anyone really care about that stuff anymore? Everyone's still shooting and starving one another when you turn on the news.'
Minogue's thoughts back-pedalled.
'It's true for you, I'm sure,' he allowed. 'Anybody'd get tired of stuff and they studying for so long. It's natural to want a break, isn't it?'
'You're telling me,' said Daithi slowly. Minogue took his chance then.
'But hardly in a pub every evening.'
Daithi stubbed out the cigarette with care and returned his father's gaze.
'It's not every evening. And who says I'm in a pub anytime I'm not here around the house?'
'I have no small experience with drink myself, Daithi. Before you were born, I'm glad to say.'
'So you can't preach, then,' Daithi said quickly.
It had slipped out, Minogue realised instantly. Daithi knew it, too.
'If you're looking for hypocrisy in people, you'll find any amount there, easy enough. But you won't find much else if that's your approach.'
'I didn't use that word.'
'You would have liked to. You'd have been entitled to.'
Daithi shook his head in exasperation. Minogue's thoughts raced.
'Ah, Jases, let's forget I ever mentioned it.' Daithi placed his hands on his knees, anxious to go.
'I wish you'd stop saying 'Jases.' It distresses your mother no end. It's a coarse expression.'
'And she told you to lay down the law about it. Even though you're…'
'I'm what?'
'Ah, come on. Ma's the only Catholic left in the house. Didn't anyone tell you?'
'All I'm asking is that you don't give her offence with it.'
Daithi stifled a belch and yawned.
