'It's around this part, too, I think… where he says that even if he had agreed to work for the Americans or the British in East Germany, they would have sold him out if the right opportunity had arisen. Like with Vogel, that poor divil he mentions, sold out to get something else going.'
'So they gave Combs a new name, a few shillings and told him to get lost and stay lost.'
Minogue nodded.
'Because he wouldn't do the dirty on the Russians. He talks about how the Russians lost over twenty million of their people in the war. Do you know, but I think he must have had great feeling for people he probably never even met in real life.'
'What do you mean?'
'Maybe he was a bit romantic about a Russian soul. I don't know. That they had been so badly done by with the so-called civilised races. Those Teutonic warrior-lunatics. Siding with victims, I wonder, this old man. That might have turned his head a bit here, too, I was thinking…' Minogue's thoughts broke away from his words. Words tumbled from his mind like dice from a hand: victim, soul, Ireland, empire, Reich, Russia.
'What are you saying?'
'It's just an impression. The remarks that Mrs Hartigan remembers. The drawings of the old stones he did, his-'
'Do you think he became a convert, is it?' said Corrigan with a skeptical frown.
Minogue suddenly remembered Mrs Hartigan's remark about the song on the radio-the Red Army Choir singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary'-how Combs, or Grimes, had been amused by it.
Minogue shrugged. Corrigan's eyes flicked up to Minogue. Minogue felt leaden and cramped in the seat.
'So you guessed that the Brits could say all this stuff was rubbish?' said Corrigan.
Minogue now knew that it was more than the hangover which was sapping his energy.
''Course they could.'
Corrigan pulled at an eyebrow. Minogue wondered if he'd ask him to go through the story again. The car swayed slightly as Dunne shifted his weight on the bonnet. The sun was out now. He heard Corrigan sucking in air through whistle lips. Corrigan gathered the pages and clapped them on their edges against his knee. Seagulls screeched overhead, heading inland. There'll be rain before the day is out, Minogue thought vacantly.
'This waiting,' Corrigan groaned. 'Madness. He might be flushing those negatives down the jacks.'
The levity was too strained for Minogue. He tried to divert Corrigan.
'So your two followed Moore to a pub last night, you said?'
'And he made a phone call there. He had a pint of beer and went back to the hotel. They don't know if the call was long-distance or not, but Morrissey-he was one of the tails-says there's more to Moore than meets the eye. Thinks that Moore knew he was under surveillance. Moore made a few checks on his way to the pub. 'Trained,' says Morrissey,'stinks of it.''
'Eilis phoned him at half nine with the yarn.'
'Volunteered to go and get it himself, did he?'
'Cool customer. He said he'd look after it if he was out at the house today, thanks very much,' replied Minogue.
' If. I like that. He was on the road at a quarter to ten, the bugger, so he was,' Corrigan remarked acidly.
'So that was round one to convince you,' Minogue said, unwilling to let the chance of a dig escape him now.
'Sure amn't I in, Matt? They'll not look good trying to say it's all rubbish if Moore treats it like the crown jewels, now that he has it. Only I wish he'd get a bloody move-on. I don't like this slow-motion stuff.'
'Time and patience,' Minogue said. 'Patience and time. This is what Moore came to find. And then we can get onto the big business, won't we?'
Corrigan raised an interrogative eyebrow at Minogue. The grey eyes fixed Minogue with a stare.
'Who Moore's boss is, who Ball's boss is at the embassy…'
Corrigan rolled his eyes and turned to stare out the window.
Moore hesitated by the phone again. He had found tape and was ready to reseal the envelope. The postmark was smudged. He could not tell whether the handwritten address in block letters was from Combs' hand. He had put his suspicions on hold while he scrutinised the photos. Although the tally of negatives matched the number of photographs, he could not match each negative to the prints until he had a means of magnifying them.
Moore noticed the envelope shaking in his hand. Ball had played for keeps, it seemed. But he had underestimated Arthur Combs by a long shot. When Combs thought it was kill or be killed, he had set the INLA on Ball. And Kenyon, for all his dusty manner, had had the right instincts, too: Combs didn't lack for determination when push came to shove, booze or no booze.
What would Kenyon do when they found out that Ball had been carrying on a private war, to the extent of ripping Costello's throat out? Moore tried to stay the trembling. He realised that he didn't know what to do.
There had been no other letters delivered. He looked about the hallway. The house unnerved him with the shambles and the sense that it would soon be closed, like a tomb. It smelled like stale bread, moulding, and Moore felt a sense of something he could not put one word on, despair maybe, loss, abandon. The contractor had said that he couldn't sent the lorry with the shutters and the tradesmen to nail the windows until this afternoon at the earliest. A tap dripped somewhere. Even the birdsong from the hedges didn't lift the gloom. Moore almost wished that that garrulous detective, Murtagh, was with him again today.
He looked down at the envelope again. The manila was a garish cofbur now, almost luminescent. It felt oddly heavier, too. He grasped it tighter between his fingers as if to control the information it contained. Seven photographs with four pages on each photo. The negatives had been cut singly, stacked wrapped in plastic. Each page on each photograph was almost completely legible without magnification.
Moore thought of Kenyon's description of Combs and what he had done forty years ago. But had Kenyon wilfully kept him in ignorance about what Combs had been up to here in Ireland? Following a strict need-to-know, using one Edward Moore as a pick-up man?
Damn, Moore's thoughts fled: to be used like this. But did Kenyon know about Ball's sorties? Costello? But the irony of that, Combs' protest that it was not because he had much sympathy for Costello or his likes. At least Kenyon had read Combs pretty accurately. So what was Moore doing in the house with this, safe in his grasp? Safe? It was like someone had handed it to him.
Moore found matches in a kitchen drawer. He brought the papers to the sink and took a match out. He looked out the window at the hedges and fields beyond. He did not strike the match but stepped over the chalked outline on the floor and went upstairs. He kept back from each window as he surveyed the fields and the lane leading up to the house. Nothing. His car alone looked out of place.
He took the photographs and negatives downstairs, put them back in the envelope and sealed it. He glanced at the telephone but dismissed the idea. His heart started to beat stronger when he paused in front of the hall door. Again he thought about the matches in the kitchen. He imagined the charred photos peeling away from one another as they burned, the negatives melting. He turned abruptly on his heel and opened the door.
Outside, Moore pulled the door closed behind him and walked down the lane. He heard no sounds save the sighing of trees caught with the first breeze of the day. The air smelled of honeysuckle. Moore started the engine and drove toward the city.
Corrigan called the second car immediately.
'— Did you copy, Chestnut Two? Our man is out of the house and looks to be headed into the city. What's your signal strength on it? Over.'
'— Well within range. Over.'
Corrigan turned wary eyes on Minogue. Then he tapped on the back of Dunne's seat.
'Wait'til both of them are by us,' he said. 'They have the know-how as regards staying with Moore.'
Dunne nodded vigorously.
'— Coming onto the Dundrum Road, Control. Over,' a broad Kerry accent intoned from the radio- speaker.
'— Copy, Chestnut One. Signal still good?'
'— Clear as a bell. Over.'
'— Chestnut Two?' Corrigan said.
