A group gathered around him, waiting to cross the street. A half-dozen headed for one of the pubs. He fell in with them. All youths; Moore doubted if any of them were legal age. It didn't seem to matter. They were half-pissed already.
Moore was three minutes late with the call. He wondered if Kenyon would hear him over the racket. He pushed further into the booth and plugged one ear with his thumb. There was a smell of sugary perfume off the receiver. He fingered the fifty-penny pieces onto the chute and dialled.
The television news came on. A heavily made-up woman announced headlines. Moore watched an image of the Union Jack and the Irish tricolour spring onto the screen, followed by a clumsy graphic map of Ireland. A line marking the border pulsated in red and the word security appeared across the map. No one paid attention to the news. He pushed the receiver tighter against his ear. He swallowed more beer. The faces around him seemed foreign. He hadn't spotted anyone who set his antennae stirring yet. More people flowed into the pub. A barman nodded at the arrivals. How could they run a country with half the population out boozing every night? It was just his preconceptions about the Irish and the booze. He heard the telephone connections click through, a hissy pause, then the phone ringing in London.
Moore felt calm. He doubted that it was the beer doing its work already. The noise of the mob seemed to rise and engulf him. He strained to hear the phone ring again. It could only be that copper. Minogue. The one with the dry humour and the bit of stage-Irish. Minogue would have put a tail on him. Had he misread Minogue? He looked around at the faces again. Like potatoes, he thought, but flush and moist, talking and laughing. Kenyon picked up the phone at the fourth ring.
'Where are you?'
'In a pub.'
'Can you hear me with that racket?'
'Just about,' Moore answered. He was amused at the displeasure in Kenyon's voice. When he looked about the crowded pub, he noticed the couple immediately. They were in their late twenties, he guessed, and they came into the pub sober. They looked too earnest about making conversation and looking about. She carried a sweater tied around her shoulders. Her hair was in a pony-tail. She could put the sweater on and shake out the pony-tail if she had to take up pursuit outside the pub, a new face. The man had longish hair, over his ears, no more than ten years out of date. His jeans looked too well tended.
'Any moves from your side?' Kenyon repeated.
'No sign yet. I had a supervised look through the house today.'
'We're going to make a pre-emptive approach to the Irish, probably tomorrow. The timing is not up to us. We just explain what's at stake and it's their party. I'd expect a backroom chat at the conference tomorrow. It gets going after lunch. You should wind up before then.'
The barman did not know the couple. Nor did any customers greet them. The woman drank a Coke while the man nursed a pint of Guinness. They looked overly absorbed in each other but not flighty enough for it to be the first date.
'Did you hear me?' an irritated Kenyon asked.
'You want me clear of the place by mid-day,' Moore said. 'And if I have made any progress before then?'
Kenyon took a breath and held.
'Same as the previous protocol. Refer any material you find before then to Mr Murray. He's running things for the moment.'
Moore heard the hostility in Kenyon's tone plain over the din of the pub. He wondered if he should bother to tell Kenyon that he was being tailed. Coppers both, the ones here, and amateurish, too. Moore watched as the man took another draught from his Guinness. Tipping it, he let his head back, his eyes almost closed. He glanced at Moore through the slit between his eyelids. Moore pretended not to notice.
He felt sure now. But how many did they have on him?
Moore hung up and looked at the television again. He tried to lip-read over the racket. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that the couple was staying put. They hadn't looked for a seat or found a wall to lean against, out of the way of the swell thronging up to the bar. That was his own face he was seeing in the mirror behind the bar. He was here in a pub in Dublin with things giving way under his feet and Kenyon's terse voice still in his memory. He was almost certainly under surveillance. Had they found something in Combs' house and were playing it out? Maybe Kenyon was already too late to pull the switch on this… But that Minogue with the eyebrows pushing up, some vague and private amusement, an appetite for mockery perhaps. It was that affable and devious Sergeant Minogue who had pinned the tail on him, Moore guessed. Taking the mickey out of the Brits, the favourite pastime here. Minogue playing a game. Moore's chest burned as he realised that Kenyon's instruction all but removed his chance of what could have been a double coup: if he had been able to recover any Combs' dossier, Moore'd be happier to pull it out from under Minogue's politely mocking nose.
Minogue poured enough Jameson whiskey to colour the tumbler as far as the supporting pylons at the bottom of the Arc de Triomphe. He held the glass to eye level. The orange liquid covered the foreground nicely, easily topping the script ' Souvenir de… ' He had bought the tawdriest memento he could find at the Gare du Nord, just before Kathleen and he had taken the train back to Le Havre.
He replaced the bottle under the sink and returned to the living-room. Kathleen had fallen asleep in the chair. The whiskey was smoky, sharper than Jameson should be. Maybe he needed to drink more of it, more often, so that it wouldn't have the whack which he was shuddering after now. Good drink for a spring day at the races. Horses, vapour breath snorting in billows, galloping.
It had been more than twenty years since Minogue had run hard on the drink. He sipped at the tumbler and counted the years. Iseult was twenty-two and a half… It must be over a quarter century since he had heard Kathleen's scream and her body hit the floor upstairs. The child, Eamonn, dead above in the cot. Nothing left at all then. Days no different than nights, for months on end. He had been lucky to hold onto his job. It was years before he knew that what had nearly destroyed him was anger, not grief.
Kathleen asleep looked a stranger to Minogue. He looked at the mute, blind television screen. Iseult wasn't home yet. He should wake Kathleen up and send her off to bed, lest Daithi come home half-jarred and cause a commotion. Minogue closed his eyes. Had Combs really missed so much by not having a family? He imagined Combs sitting on a rock drawing the patterns from the stones. Combs and Joyce supping whiskey in his kitchen, a tinker swapping horse yarns with an Englishman. Jimmy Kilmartin's face drifted in behind Minogue's eyelids. Jimmy, the man who was so anxious to be seen doing the right thing. How did a person get like that, so anxious to please? But Jimmy was shrewd, tough as nails by times, no fawning Polonius. Showing how responsible he was… to whom? For what?
The phone rings erupted as pink flares into Minogue's eyelid world. It was his own phone. Kathleen stirred. The room was bright when he opened his eyes. Had he fallen asleep? A man with a genteel Limerick accent was looking for Sergeant Minogue.
'Who would you be yourself?'
'This is Sergeant Dwyer and I'm calling from Shankill Station. Would you be Sergeant Minogue?'
'I would.'
'Well, I'm sorry now to be disturbing you. Very sorry, and it ten o'clock at night. I hope I'm doing the right thing now. I have your number from a colleague of yours. Detective Keating.'
'Go on.'
'I was put through to him after I called the Murder Squad. He thought you wouldn't mind being phoned at home under the circumstances. To make a long story short, I have a man here says he won't stir without seeing you. He knows your name and all. Not a word until he sees you.'
'Who is he?'
'Man by the name of Joyce. A tinker.'
'Michael Joseph Joyce?'
'The very man.'
'What's he doing in Shankill station?'
'He was in a row in a pub here in Shankill and we took him in.'
'Is it just drunk and disorderly with him?'
'No, it isn't,' Dwyer said as if a conclusion had been reached. 'Matter of fact he is up for assault and battery. A client in the pub. Joyce opened his head with a bottle. The man needs stitches all over his face. Joyce'll appear in
