court in the morning. It's a mighty serious business. The man could have lost an eye.'
'Is he sober now, or out-and-out drunk?'
'Well, he can talk up the divil's own story, so he can't be much under the influence. Says that the client passed comments about tinkers in public houses.
Asked him who his wife was shacking up with while he was in the pub.'
'So what does he want with me?'
'He says that there's something he forgot to tell you when he was talking to you the other day.'
'He didn't mention that he was going to stretch someone in a pub with a bottle in the face,' Minogue muttered.
'Ha, ha, I suppose he didn't at that. But he says it's terrible important and that you'd be needing to know right away. And if we didn't tell you, it'd be on our own heads, so it would. If he was really langers, I would've done nothing. But when he says Murder Squad, he got me to thinking, do you follow me?'
Minogue, a Clareman and thus not normally disposed to following any suggestion made to him by any party from the neighbouring county of Limerick, conceded that he did.
'I'll be by in a half hour,' Minogue said.
Kathleen was turning out the light in the living room.
It was gone eleven when Minogue, Joyce and the Garda left Shankill station. Flahive, the Garda, chainsmoked as he drove. Joyce and Minogue sat in the back of the squad-car. Once off the Bray Road and its lights, Minogue could see that the night sky was still clear. He found The Plough well into the middle of the sky.
'There's no chance in the world, is there?' Joyce said.
'No. Not something like this. This is a serious charge, Michael Joseph. The man has stitches up and down his face.'
'And him after abusing myself and Josie?' Joyce snapped.
'He didn't mean it personally.'
'Do you mean to tell me that he tells everyone he meets the same thing, is it?'
This was a changed Joyce, Minogue reflected. Something had given way in him, struck out. Bitterness, a lifetime.
'And I suppose you'll be telling me that I would have been better off if I had have been as drunk as a lord, too drunk to hear him?' Joyce added scornfully.
'Or take a bottle to him.'
He heard Joyce snort. Joyce was sober. He sat upright in the seat. Minogue could almost feel a heat of resentment from him. Where was the timid and wheedling Joyce of yesterday?
'What'll me wife and childer do and me locked up in the barracks?' Joyce declared.
Minogue had no pleasing answer. Flahive braked hard for the corkscrew bend at the bottom of Bride's Glen Road. Joyce's caravan was less than a mile up the hill.
'And all the help I'm giving you this evening?' Joyce tried.
'Help you should have given me straightaway yesterday,' said Minogue sharply. 'You were a foolish man entirely not to tell me about this letter the first time I talked to you. So don't be acting the maggot with me now.'
'Didn't I have a few drinks on me and I left the letter in a jacket of mine? I would have tore up that letter and scattered it to the four winds after me finding out what happened to poor Mr Combs. To be mixed up in that class of thing, I says to myself. You can't trust any but your own, we often say, and it's true.'
'But you didn't tear it up?' Minogue interrupted.
'Mr Combs might have told someone that a letter was on the way and that t'would be expected. Quick like. I wanted rid of that letter like it was the divil's cloak, let me tell you. So far as I might know it might have been a life-or-death thing, and Mickey Joyce shouldn't have any more truck with a poor man who was after getting himself murdered…'
Life-or-death, Minogue's mind echoed. Talked to Joyce on Monday. Middle of the day. Ball was killed on the Tuesday, near midnight. The letter must have gone to a Dublin address.
'Not even one letter you'd remember off the words on the envelope?' Minogue tried. 'An A, a B… any letters?'
Joyce shook his head conclusively.
'I wish I had learned a bit of… ' his words trailed off, the head still shaking, slower now.
'When did he give it to you?'
'A week ago, I suppose. We were after having a few drinks and he had the jitters a bit, I was thinking to myself. I didn't like to be asking him what his business was, but I couldn't help noticing he wasn't in the best of fettle.'
'Did he talk about anything that was bothering him?'
'No, he didn't. But he had a funny look to him. He took the letter out of his pocket, and he waved it at me with a kind of look on his face. I don't know what you'd call it-'
'Go on.'
Joyce took a deep breath and sighed.
'He waved the letter around a bit and he says to me, 'Do you know what's in this?' We had a few drinks on us now, I don't mind telling you. So naturally, I tells him I didn't. 'That,' says he,'that is like setting a pack of dogs on the loose.' Looking at the letter like it was something very strange, not bits of paper at all… I says nothing.'
'Michael Joseph. Did Mr Combs know whether you could read and write?'
Joyce frowned his puzzlement and scratched his head.
'I don't know… I suppose. He asked me once what I made of the state of the world, me being a traveller. In a nice way, you understand. I think I told him that I knew nothing about the affairs of people out in the world and that I didn't need to be concerning myself about goings-on like-'
'What did he do or say when you said that?'
'How can I remember that? He was always kind of nice, like, he wouldn't talk down to you. I suppose he didn't take much notice.'
'Did he say anything else, then? When he gave you the letter?'
'I can't think of what… and me leaving, with the letter in me pocket… He had the look on him again, like he was sober all of a sudden. To tell you the truth I had the willies a bit and me coming home, thinking about the way Mr Combs looked. He said something about boats, I don't know what… He said his boat had run aground. Then says something about the holy ground to me. Like it might have been funny if he hadn't have been looking so shook. You know the tune, 'The Holy Ground?''
'Boats?'
'Like a saying, I suppose. Then some other queer expression about a boat on fire…'
'Burning your boats?'
Joyce looked up abruptly. 'That's it. The very thing. What does that mean at all?'
Minogue had no answer. Something, his thoughts nagged sluggishly- something- something Combs did, something he had. Gave Joyce a letter to post-but why not post it himself? Something of value; value to whom? No. Combs had given Joyce money, but would he really have trusted him with something valuable, given the temptations of larceny or drink? Minogue's thoughts tugged at a line, bobbed and then went slack again. Nothing. 'Burning your boats.' Wasn't that Homer? The Greeks stranded before the walls of Troy… a last gamble. His tiredness rumbled into irritation again.
Joyce's wife was standing in the doorway of the caravan. She pushed children in behind her. A crawling infant escaped her, scurrying between her legs. She noticed it an instant before the child made to go down the step. Josie Joyce gathered the child and planted it on her hip without taking her eyes from the squad-car.
'What have you done?' she cried out. 'What have you done tonight and you with handcuffs on you, you big ujit?'
She began weeping. It turned to keening, then pleading. It set off a child somewhere out of Minogue's sight, at the far end of the caravan. Joyce told his wife to shut up. Flahive stood against the bonnet of the car with his arms folded. The interior of the caravan was lit by a gas lantern hissing on the kitchen table. Joyce's wife had begun waffling again.
'Don't be carrying on, woman,' Joyce hissed.
