'Fuck sakes, get us out of this!' Corrigan hissed.
Minogue returned the gaze of schoolchildren looking down from the bus. They were laughing. Minogue felt like a zoo animal. The bus edged by the three policemen. Dunne was sweating heavily, turning the wheel uselessly. Corrigan sat paralysed, concentrating on the voice from the radio.
'— Reading something. He's opened it up. Some book…'
Dunne began swearing now, quiet, sincere, rural obscenities.
'— He's off. He's turning around. Over.'
'— Who's on him?' Corrigan said into the mike.
'— Repeat, Chestnut One,' Corrigan's shout erupted through Minogue's trance, 'who's clear on pursuit?'
Corrigan sprang forward in the seat, his cheek jammed against the head-rest. Dunne licked the in-sides of his lips and flicked glances at the wing mirror. The bus stopped finally beside them. They were blocked. It was perfect timing for Moore, Minogue realised.
'— Chestnut Two to Control. We're jammed-'
'— He's gone. Gone up Taney Road,' cawed the Kerry accent.
Corrigan's mouth hung open. For a moment he became completely still. Then he hammered the seat-back with the edge of his fist. He leaped from the seat and began waving his photocard at motorists to clear a way. Dunne began edging the car into a space being cleared ahead. The lights changed. Dunne had the car moving as Corrigan fell heavily back into the seat, grasping at the doorhandle.
'— Chestnut One to Control. Signal's converging, there's some fade…'
Other cars turned up Taney Road ahead of them. Moore had plenty of padding if he wanted to lose them. Dunne bullied the car across the junction. From the far side of the junction, Minogue caught a glimpse of the other radio-car, a blue Nissan, with full headlamps on, stuck half-way up on the curb. Tires howled somewhere.
Corrigan was livid. He tried to smother his breathing, but it came out of his nostrils in harsh, wheezy whistles. Dunne leaned over the wheel as if to spur the car on through the unengineered limits of second gear. Then Corrigan took a deep breath and let it out of his mouth, all the while glaring at Minogue.
'I might have guessed we shouldn't have been diddling around with a small unit for this. That kind of stunt he just pulled doesn't happen by accident, Matt. He's a pro. Here we are, flopping around. If we don't spot him ahead of the junction up ahead, what do you call it?'
'Goatstown.'
'Right. He can go any of three ways he likes. And we'll be sitting there, holding our mickeys.'
Corrigan's anger faded into a bitter inflexion. The car lurched back over the white line, greeted by a horn behind. Minogue was flung onto an elbow in the back seat. The car dived and rose as Dunne stamped at the brake, then clutched into second and pulled out to pass. Minogue fell back against the seat. He decided to stay put.
'— Control to Chestnuts One and Two. Give me a situation in order.'
There was no hesitation this time.
'— We're through onto Taney Road,' the Kerry accent replied reluctantly.
'Meaning ye're well behind us, ye morons,' Corrigan hissed off-air.
'— In sight of Chestnut One, sir. Coming through the junction now. Two over.'
'— Well we're ahead of ye both on Taney,' Corrigan spat into the mike. 'So get a move-on for the love of…'
Both radio-cars confirmed.
'— What's the signal look like? Over.'
'— Intermittent… fading in spots.'
Corrigan rolled his eyes.
'— Same with Two.'
Corrigan thumbed savagely to transmit.
'— Central this is Control for Operation Melody. I want in on the South Dublin frequency. Confirm you'll link me. Over.'
'— Confirming your request, Inspector,' came the cautious reply. 'But you'll have to wait a minute or two, sir. There's a lag now that we're trying to sort out the new equipment…'
'Maybe a squad-car'll pick him up, sir,' said Dunne.
'Squad-car my Aunt Fanny's fat agricultural arse,' Corrigan retorted. 'Moore will go to ground for a while at least. But at least we can keep him away from the embassy, if he has ideas in that line.'
Minogue believed that the snap was meant for him, not Dunne. Neither Minogue nor Dunne dared to speak. They listened while Corrigan directed one of the radio-cars toward the British Embassy on Merrion Road. Still waiting for the link, Corrigan swore with impatience and glared out the back window at the grille of a labouring lorry. Somewhere in the line of traffic struggling behind the lorry was the other radio-car.
' Dum spiro, spero,' Minogue soothed. Neither man asked for an explanation.
Minogue wanted to lie down, empty his head. He'd mucked it up. He had second prints of Combs' stuff, but they might never get to the accessory, Ball's accomplice-his boss. Moore had turned out not to be a pin-striped dope after all. And now, Pat Corrigan unravelling there in the front seat, too, giving himself a heart attack. He had read Moore wrong. The same Moore could be laughing up his sleeve now.
Minogue yawned long, the tears gathering at the outer edges of his eyelids. He opened his eyes into a bleary world and listened while Corrigan issued instructions brusquely into the car radio for the uniformed Gardai on the network. Corrigan dissembled fluently to the Gardai in the squad-cars, telling what he knew would be attentive policemen that it was a Special Branch matter and that the driver was to be detained on the spot.
Then Corrigan's face appeared between the seats as he looked down at Minogue. The soft grey eyes stared, eyelashes sweeping twice, and he looked back over the dash.
'Nice work, Pat,' Minogue risked.
'In case you didn't overhear me, I'm going to grab this Moore any way I can. That's my way and that's the way we should have attacked this bloody operation in the first place.'
'But we had to be sure the photos were worth something, Pat. Now we know; we have the bit between our teeth, don't we?' Minogue said, as sincerely as he could.
Dunne worked at seizing the gearbox again. Corrigan gave Minogue a searching look. Minogue saw Corrigan's fretful tongue run around inside his lips, upper and lower in turn. He now felt reasonably sure that Pat had very good dentures indeed.
Moore stepped out of the car and drew in the heavy, languid sea air. He had parked next to a lorry, which concealed his Mini from the coast road, a good couple of hundred yards back up the lane from the railway station. Bootstown? No, Booterstown. He found the public phone attached to the stone wall which made up the back of the station-house. So far Moore had seen nobody moving around the building. Mid-day, slack.
Moore dialled and waited. He heard the switchboard clicks before the phone began ringing.
'Yes?'
Had Kenyon given him the right number?
'Mr Murray please.'
'Hold, please.'
They didn't even ask, Moore reflected.
'Please phone at the alternate number.'
Irritated by the security, Moore struggled to remember the six digits. He took out a fifty-penny piece, all the change he had left, and dialled again. He heard two rings before the receiver was lifted abruptly.
'Murray here.'
'I'm calling about some material I've located.'
There was a long pause before Murray spoke.
'Mr Moore? You can be specific on this line,' he heard Murray say slowly. 'The line is continuously encoded, incoming and outgoing.'
Moore hesitated, distracted by the hissy quiet from Murray's end.
'I have some extremely sensitive material here,' Moore said. Still silence from Murray's end. Moore felt that obscure agitation again. It had lain buried beneath the tension which had gripped him when he had first spotted the blue car. Even now, confident that he had lost any pursuit car, the burrowing doubt gnawed at him again. Stupid, he thought, the damn place had him on edge: looks like Britain, but completely alien.
