an expression of resolute regret as he talked to the bearded man. The bearded man kept looking at the faces in the pub. The barman’s hands went to his hips and he nodded toward the door. The bearded man looked at him for a moment, seemed about to say something, but pivoted. Minogue saw that the bags seemed to be crammed with newspapers. So still had the collie been in the shadows behind that Minogue was surprised when it stirred. Minogue looked up from the animal to find the man’s eyes staring at him. The intensity held his eyes for a moment before returning to the barman’s. The barman nodded at the door again and shrugged. The bearded man left. The collie trotted out, its eyes locked on the man’s boots. Minogue looked to their wake until the door swung back, then sipped from his whiskey. Ah, good heart, he tried to decoy himself. The drop of malt, the soft drift into comfort: there’s always whiskey.
Mick leaned over and murmured into Minogue’s ear.
“That poor divil. Your man there, the go-by-the-wall. You know him.”
Mick shifted slowly in his chair and Minogue saw his brother’s face seize with pain as he moved.
“That envelope back at the house,” Mick added, sucking in air.
“Was that Jamesy Bourke?”
“None other.”
Minogue watched as Mick rubbed under his chin with the back of his hand.
“There’s a family that’s scattered to the four winds. The mother only died a while ago. Three year. I tell a lie. Four. Four come the Christmas. She lived there alone and died of a broken heart. Jamesy was let out under guard for the funeral and he was gone again until a few months ago.”
“Let out,” Minogue repeated.
“Don’t you remember that fire? The dead girl? A Canadian girl? I suppose it’s ten or twelve years or more now. She was burned to death in a cottage she was renting. It was Jamesy set the place on fire and she inside. A love thing that went sour on him. He got a life sentence as I recall.”
Minogue thought of the envelope he had dropped into the suitcase back at the farm. Crossan, the barrister, was working in some capacity for Jamesy Bourke. Something lurched into his thoughts then. Had Bourke known he’d be here tonight? Had he come to talk to him?
“I heard he lost his mind in prison,” Mick murmured. “Took a knife to a warder and had time tacked on to his sentence for it…”
“But he’s-?”
“Ah, he has medication and that.” Mick flicked his head. “So far, so good, I suppose. No run-ins with anyone. Yet. But there’s plenty of people didn’t want him coming back here at all. They cross the street or turn around rather than have to pass him. The poor divil. Lonely there by himself. There’s only Jamesy and his dog left above in the cottage. Very fond of the dog. You’d hear him talking away to the dog and they walking the roads, the two of them. It was the mother, God rest her, scraped that little house out of the farm after she was rid of it.”
Mick shrugged and began massaging his hands again.
“There was bad luck on that family, there’s no doubt,” he added.
Minogue stood and began to thread his way toward the toilet. Dan Howard was still on the move, shaking hands with a man just in the door of the pub. When he returned Howard was gone. The musicians’ faces looked redder but more determined, but neither the German nor Mrs Howard sat next to them now. Newcomers occupied the table, faces vaguely familiar to Minogue. He nodded at them and smiled, trying to place them, believing that he knew the family at least. He sat down next to his brother with faint dismay still hanging in his mind. Eoin raised his glass and tipped it against his uncle’s.
“Your health, now, Uncle Matt, and all belonging to you.”
The edges of the road glistened under the streetlamps and the night air was astir with the breeze in off the sea. Minogue felt its presence as it rolled and lapped up to the shore below the village. He paused on the threshold of the pub and watched a rain so fine as to be almost mist bloom under the rim of the streetlamps. The door of the pub hissed closed behind him, swallowing the talk within. He listened more keenly now, but he still couldn’t be sure that it was the hush of the sea he was hearing. The smell of seaweed from the harbour, mingled with turf-smoke, thickened the air around him. Eoin blundered out the door, nearly pitching him into the street. “Sorry, Uncle Matt.”
Eoin fiddled with the car keys and Mick paused to blow his nose. Minogue heard a dog bark up the street. A man laughed raucously somewhere. The dog howled as though struck and then began barking again. In between barks, Minogue heard laughs and a guffaw. He walked beyond the car and stopped by the forecourt of a garage recessed in from the street. From there he saw Deegan poke at the shopping bag. Bourke held the bag of newspapers tighter. The streetlamp reflected off his eyes as they darted from Deegan to the other two. The dog made another run at Deegan but moved to avoid a boot from one of Deegan’s cronies.
“What’s in the bag, professor?” Deegan called out over the dog’s growling. “Dirty pictures, hah?”
Minogue remembered that same tone of bogus kindliness in the sadistic teachers of his youth. Jamesy Bourke wrapped his arms around the bag and his eyes fastened on Minogue. Eoin and Mick now stood beside him. Deegan caught sight of the Minogues and turned to face them. The two men with him, young, with the slack smiles of men who had been drinking, turned also.
“A man can’t stop and water his horse without some quare fella lying in wait and looking on,” said Deegan. “Isn’t that a divil?”
He glanced at the collie and then raised his arms and hissed. The dog recoiled, barking furiously. Deegan laughed. Still chuckling, he ambled by Mick. The two younger men followed.
“Tell me something,” Minogue said as they passed. “Is it just the Hallowe’en or are ye like this every night of the year?”
Deegan slowed his jaunty gait. Minogue noted how thick he was in silhouette. One of the men’s shoes scuffed on the edge of the footpath and he took an extra step to steady himself.
“Ah, the polls down from the big city, bejases,” Deegan drawled. “Enjoy your little holiday now, can’t you, and then go home to Dublin without worrying about us humble folk down here. We can look after ourselves.”
The Inspector turned back to where Bourke had been standing. He was gone.
Minogue laid the envelope on the chest of drawers and began to finger his laces loose. Kathleen looked out from behind a paperback.
“I think I remember it now,” she said.
“He was released just a few months ago.”
Kathleen retreated behind the book. Her tipsy husband stared at the picture on the cover. A girl with long hair and her dress off her shoulder had her leg around a Robert Redford type inclined over her. Smoke-puffing cannon and soldiers busied themselves in the background. He stood and let the trousers drop, sat down on the bed and drew the trousers around his heels. Was it cold in Dublin too? Hoey. Where was Aine again? Zimbabwe. Hot there, no doubt.
“Not a word out of him,” Minogue murmured. “Just walked off.” The damp air brushed against his bare legs. The room had been his parents’ and the wallpaper was a half-dozen layers thick.
“Who? Mick?”
“Jamesy Bourke. I thought he might come over and say something. But he just took off, himself and the dog.”
Kathleen laid the book face down.
“God, can’t you stop reminding me about that fella? You come home with a few jars on you and the first thing, you want to tell me all the gory details about it.”
“Wait a minute there. You’re one of the ones helped set me up for this little ‘job’ that bloody barrister Crossan wants me to do.”
“Did you talk to Eoin or Mick about the future even? No, you didn’t.”
“There was music.”
“There was music. Of course there was music. There’s always something getting in the way.”
“I can’t just waltz in and start talking about selling the farm.”
“Maybe not, but here you are, to top it all off, sitting there this last half-hour reading that stuff in the envelope. Some kind of a lunatic. God, it gives me the creeps, man.”
