“And you belong to Rossaboe and places west?” Crossan murmured.
Belong? Perhaps he did, the Inspector supposed. Thirty years in Dublin had but rubbed him down to bedrock. As weather is to climate.
“Born, bred and starved there,” Minogue admitted. The lawyer smiled briefly, walked to the door of the hotel and held it open.
A waitress whom Crossan called Maureen led them through the dining room. Yes, she told Minogue, the coffee was freshly brewed.
“You got the envelope then,” said Crossan. “The photocopies, like.”
Minogue nodded and inspected the cutlery. As regards trappings, the hotel had improved no end, he had to conclude. His last dining adventure here had been nearly six years ago when he had come down to Ennis to bury an uncle on his mother’s side. He pondered the possibility of soaking Crossan for a salmon and seafood dish listed for fifteen quid.
“And the, er, thing that Jamesy penned. That epistle…?”
“As best I could,” said Minogue. “Tended to be repetitive, really.”
“Did it make any sense to you?”
“Not a whole lot. Have you had many dealings with mental illness in your job, Counsellor?”
Crossan flashed a rueful smile which ended in a frown. The waitress appeared with the wine. Minogue looked around the room as she poured. The dining room was almost full. Businessmen, farmers and travelling men down for the mart, a few late-in-the-season tourists. A table across from theirs had a reserved sign on it. As he reached for his glass the couple appeared in the doorway.
She looked tall here, he thought. Her hair was actually blonde, her eyes clear and still. She seemed to be brighter and clearer than others in the room, as if she had captured some sharp light all for herself. For an instant, Minogue believed he could smell a faint perfume. Dan Howard stood next to her now. A waitress fussed around them. More faces turned toward the couple.
“Well, now,” he heard Crossan say. The ice was tugging at Minogue’s guts now. She had seen them, noted them, he believed.
The tone, a mix of sarcasm and stern humour, brought Minogue to.
“And good day to you, Mr and Mrs Howard,” Crossan called out.
Dan Howard winked at Crossan. His smile broadened as he walked to Minogue’s table. Sheila Howard strolled after him.
“Well, Alo, you’re always busy,” said Howard. He leaned in and offered his hand to Minogue.
“Parlous times as ever,” said Crossan. “Where there’s trouble, there’s money.”
“Hello, Aloysious,” said Sheila Howard. She nodded at Minogue.
Minogue’s chest was tight but his heart’s thump seemed to visibly rock it. Sheila Howard blinked, smiled and looked from Minogue to Crossan. Minogue tried not to look at her face. He wondered if anyone could see his chest pounding.
“And Mick Minogue’s brother, how are you?” he heard Dan Howard asking.
“I’m very well,” he managed to say.
“A small world, now, isn’t it?” Howard went on. “Are you enjoying your holiday?”
“To be sure,” said Minogue.
“Great. I hope you’re considering coming back home sometime, are you? We’ve a lot going on in Clare nowadays.”
“In more ways than one,” said Crossan.
Howard grinned.
“Time enough,” said Minogue.
Howard laughed. An easy, cheery laugh. Disarming, Minogue thought. A favoured son, the boy, this Dan Howard seemed.
“Great,” said Howard, and rubbed his hands together. He turned to Minogue with a sardonic squint.
“You’re sitting next to the best barrister in County Clare, I’ll have you know. You know where to find me if you want me, I hope. Drop into the office anytime. Don’t mind that crowd up in Dublin.”
The Howards returned to their table. Sheila Howard sat down and her husband followed, flapping loose his napkin from the glass. She folded her arms over the mauve cashmere polo-neck which hung loosely from her shoulders. Howard moved his glass to the side of his place-setting and smiled at his wife.
Us and them again, thought Minogue: the crowd in Dublin and the country people. Like many another rural TD, Howard championed “his own” against the distant uncomprehending bureaucrats and voters in Dublin. But didn’t Howard spend his time in Dublin?
“How do you know Dan?” Crossan repeated.
“Oh. We were in the pub in Portaree. Himself and missus arrived in for some kind of a meeting.”
“Indeed,” said Crossan with delicate scorn. “The PDDA.”
“They live in Ennis, the Howards, do they?” asked Minogue.
“They maintain the residence here,” Crossan replied in a nasal drone of nonchalance which Minogue read as his send-up of snobbery. “As well as a pied-a-terre in the capital. They dine occasionally here among the patrons of the Old Ground.”
“Well, Dan Howard seems to count as a fan of yours,” Minogue prodded.
Crossan snorted and sipped at his wine.
“Hah. Do you have fans yourself now, Inspector Minogue? In your line of work, I mean.”
Images came to Minogue: a pile of rags in the ditch, what was left after a hit-and-run. And how could you kick a man in the face enough to kill him? Were parts of humanity exempt from evolution?
“Hard to tell, really. But people are relieved when a murderer is caught, if that’s what you mean.”
Crossan’s eyes glistened but remained blank and unblinking. The Inspector watched as Crossan’s thoughts seemed to return to him. He nodded as though conceding something.
“Oho,” said Crossan then, a glint of happy malice in his stare.
The Howards were getting up from their table. Although her face betrayed no signs, Minogue sensed in Sheila Howard an anger held in check. Dan Howard’s dimples seemed to have disappeared. The waitress was already darting over to them. Crossan leaned back in his chair and looked out the window onto the street.
“By gor,” said Crossan. “Speak of the devil. There’s timing for you. The man himself.”
Minogue looked out through the curtain onto the street. A bread lorry drove by slowly, revealing in its wake the dog, then the bearded figure and the bag on the footpath beside him. The sun was full on Jamesy Bourke. Minogue watched the waitress persuade the Howards to stay at another table. Dan Howard’s practised, public face regained its affability. He made a joke to the waitress and then looked toward Crossan and Minogue, eyebrows arched, as though to convey a magnanimous patience which Minogue did not understand. Sheila Howard busied herself moving the condiments and flowers around on the table. Dan Howard ran his fingers through his curls once and pointed to something on the menu. Two middle-aged men in suits stopped by the Howards’ table and shook hands with Dan Howard. A quip was issued, a joke returned.
Crossan nodded his head in the direction of the window.
“Sometimes Jamesy takes up station outside yours truly’s constituency office up the street here. ‘The clinic,’ as if to say he was looking for a cure, you might say. Our modern version of pagan idolatry.”
When Minogue looked out the window again, Jamesy Bourke and his dog were gone. For a reason his mind could not fasten on, the Inspector saw the wall where Jamesy Bourke had stood as strangely vacant now, filled with the sun’s glare but somehow marked by the absence of the figures, as though a shadow had been left. The waitress snapped open a folding table and laid the tray on it.
Crossan’s eyes snapped open and they bored into the Inspector’s. “Well,” he said. “Have you left your bits of rags and your rosaries out by the holy well and done your indulgences?”
Minogue’s puzzlement showed.
“Aha. You’ve lost your religion up in the metropolis. All Souls.”
“Ah, I’d forgotten.”
“There are no ghosts above in Dublin, I suppose.”
Minogue recalled his mother hanging bits of cloth by St. Gobnet’s Well amidst the statues, the holy pictures and the flowers. Did Maura now tie pieces of Mick’s clothes there to implore a saint no longer a saint in Rome to
