Minogue thought of Kilmartin’s grim amusement when he recounted the sloppiness of Guards in securing evidence, those arrows in the Chief Inspector’s quiver he used when defending his Squad. “Mullocking and bollicking about,” Kilmartin called those blunders.
“Maybe the local Gardai had the resources and the competence to do it,” said Minogue.
Minogue wondered if Crossan would detect the tongue-in-cheek. The lawyer leaned to one side and took an envelope from under a notepad.
“Interesting you should say that, now,” he murmured. “That’s the same tune they played at the time too. Here, open this up.”
Minogue wanted to ask about it but Crossan kept talking.
“Back then I was articling in Limerick. Learning the ropes. Used to come home weekends.”
Minogue slid out a photograph and a folded newspaper clipping. Crossan swished more whiskey into their glasses.
“Dan Howard,” said Minogue.
“Good for you. You wouldn’t know the others, I’ll bet.”
Minogue squinted at the faces. The snapshot had been taken with a cheap camera and the cyanotic hue of the emulsions reminded Minogue of murder victims. Glare from the flash had whitened a face too close to the lens. Bottles around the room reflected the flash. Red pupils like vampires, a sweaty sheen on the faces. One of the men was playing a guitar backwards. Another was holding a bottle out to toast, but the flash had caught him with his eyelids almost completely closed. Crossan pushed the glass of whiskey at Minogue and poked his finger at one of the faces.
“Come on, try.”
Minogue looked again at the long, blonde hair parted in the middle. The girl was smiling, but not in earnest. Her eyes with the eerie pink pupils were looking directly toward the lens.
“Sheila Howard,” said Minogue.
“Sheila Hanratty, she was then,” Crossan corrected. “Now. See the fella standing up, waving the bottle. The fella with his eyes half closed, looks like he just got hit by lightning.”
Minogue looked at the sweaty faces again and shook his head. “Whoever he is, he looks like he’s well-on there.”
“But can you tell me who he is?”
“Mo, I can’t. I’m from Clare, fair enough, but I don’t keep census details in me head.”
“He’s from your end of the parish.”
“So’s half the country.”
“That’s Jamesy Bourke.”
Minogue’s brain flashed a picture of the bearded man: the dog, the bags of newspapers, the slinging off into the night outside the pub last night. The ghost standing across from the hotel dining room at dinner. Crossan had hinted that Bourke was obsessed with the Howards. The barrister fingered open the clipping, held it out and put on a haughty air as he read it aloud. Minogue sipped at his whiskey.
“This is the original of one of the pieces I sent you. Christ, the flow of language. My God, man, you can’t beat the prose of a reporter on a provincial Irish newspaper. ‘While in a state of drunkenness, aggravated by the same narcotic substances bringing ruin to so many young lives, James Bourke killed Jane Clark of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in an act of manslaughter… In delivering his decision, Justice Sweeney called the case a tragedy but one that has clear lessons for society. The behaviour and lifestyle which drink and drugs bring in their wake promote the abandonment of the very values that bind a society together and give it strength. Despite the convicted man’s involvement with narcotic substances and a self-admitted drinking problem, and notwithstanding his confession and remorse over what he had done, Justice Sweeney noted, these factors do not diminish decent people’s dismay and horror at the death of this young woman, a visitor to our shores…’ Will I go on?”
Minogue shook his head. Crossan let go of the clipping. It fell to his lap folded in upon itself. Minogue peered at the snapshot again.
“Typical Sweeney. A spoiled priest, they used to say. Always thought the Bench was a bloody pulpit. Was it merely bad luck that Jamesy Bourke drew the same Sweeney for trial?”
“That’s the girl there, the one with the tan?”
Crossan nodded. “Tell me who took the picture, if you can.”
“You did,” said Minogue.
Crossan smiled briefly.
“So,” Minogue resumed with clear exasperation. “Ye were friends.”
Crossan puckered his lips and exhaled. He spoke in a subdued tone now.
“We were all friends then. Jane Clark was a breath of fresh air here. She was wild out, but so what? She came to stay a few days and ended up staying the whole summer.”
“Longer than that,” said Minogue.
“That’s right, yes. She had rented that cottage out on the Leckaun Road and she was setting it up to do a bit of pottery. She was here to stay, she said. We used to be slagging her for being a tourist, you know, a blow-in that’d be gone by the autumn. Jamesy was head over heels from the minute he set eyes on her. He wrote her poems. But Jamesy was a tearaway lad, with his music and his poetry, flying around in every pub between here and Ennis. Not cut out for the farming, Jamesy.”
Minogue glanced up at Crossan. The lawyer was nodding his head slowly while he bit his lip.
“She’s buried out in Canada,” Crossan said. “What was left of her after the fire.”
The Inspector placed his hands on the armrests. Crossan didn’t seem to notice the hint.
“The story is that Jamesy set fire to the cottage in the early hours, about one o’clock. After he put a match to it, he sat out by the front door with the remains of a bottle of whiskey in his fist and waited for Jane Clark to run out the door and into his arms. Like a film he had running in his head. Mad drunk.”
“Out of his mind,” said Minogue. “We’re getting to the point here now, I think.”
“When she didn’t come out, he lost it,” Crossan went on. “Started screaming. He had had a big row with her earlier on that evening, on account of her sharing her favours with someone else.”
“Yourself?” Minogue tried.
Crossan snorted. “Spare me. No, it was Dan Howard.”
Minogue sat back in his chair. He thought of Dan Howard’s ready smile.
“Ray Doyle was the Sergeant the time,” Crossan continued. “Not the worst, I’d have to say. A bit thick, really. Naughton was the Guard most involved. Tom Naughton. He was the old hand around Rossaboe, a Limerickman. He was also a bollocks of the first order. Naughton was the one who got things done around Rossaboe, really. He was first on the scene that night. Well, Tom Naughton went out of his way to nail Jamesy and get him locked up as quick as he could for as long as he could.”
“Personal thing with him, was it?”
“Yes. He had it in for Jamesy. Jamesy was always one step ahead of the Guards here as regards any general mischief. Naughton himself was partial to the drink and that was well known. Jamesy was a terrible mimic-to beat the band, really. He’d have us all in stitches in the pub. Naughton hated him. Vindictive type of a man, Naughton. A real bastard.”
“We number some in our ranks,” Minogue offered after several seconds. “Did Doyle go after any other, em, Bohemians in the area? Such as yourself and Master Howard, like.”
“Hah,” Crossan sneered. “He’d never go after Dan Howard or myself, for all the mischief we might have been up to. We were gentry after a fashion, safe enough with our wild oats. But Naughton was in a lather over Jamesy Bourke and the carry-on out at the cottage. The attitude with Naughton was that Jane Clark was a one-woman crime wave with a mission to subvert the morals of the whole bloody country. He’d called on the cottage a few times, poking around, but she knew her onions as regards the law, as I recall. Search warrants and what have you. She wasn’t afraid of him.”
Minogue placed his glass down heavily on the desk at his elbow.
“All right,” he said. “Now. One question.”
Crossan stared at the Inspector.
“Why now?”
Crossan paused before answering. Minogue realised that Crossan had thought about this, had expected
