Inspector held his breath, tried out a smile and knocked.
He believed that Hoey had lost weight. He studied the bruise that extended from the eyebrows up to his hairline.
“Does the Killer know?” Hoey asked.
“I don’t think so. Not yet.”
Hoey’s eyes remained fixed. His cracked lips were colourless and dried saliva clung to the corners of his mouth. Minogue sat back in the chair and stared at a purple and green weal which lay smack in the middle of Hoey’s forehead. The day had caught up to the Inspector. He felt something welling up slowly in his chest. Hoey glanced back into his scrutiny but Minogue ignored the hint. He tried to clear his throat but lapsed into coughing. Minogue looked away.
Hoey’s cough subsided. “Won’t do much for the looks,” he whispered.
“Look, Shea. You were never much of a talker. Isn’t it time for a bit of a change?”
Hoey squinted out from his good eye. “What do you think the Killer will make of it?”
“You weren’t breathalysed or sampled after they pulled you out of it, so there’s nothing formal to trip over. Yet.”
“Won’t stop Kilmartin.”
“You could have talked, Shea. Should have.”
“About what?”
“Whatever the hell is bothering you. Here you go, obviously pissed, behind the wheel of a car, and you wreck-”
“It’s my business.”
Minogue’s anger began to uncoil behind his ribs.
“I came up from Clare after I heard from Eilis to see-”
“Ah, fuck it, man! I’m out!”
Hoey sat up, rolled slowly off the bed and began walking stiffly around the room. Except for his shoes he was fully dressed. Minogue noted the streaks of dried blood on his shirt. The compound smells of the hospital began to add to his claustrophobia. He counted to five.
“What do you mean ‘out’?”
“Look. The Killer won’t have me back anyway. A head-case. I can just see him. I’m sick of the whole bloody caper anyway.”
Hoey whirled around to face the Inspector, his hands out.
“How the hell did I ever wind up here? That’s what I’d like to know.”
Minogue sat forward. His joints had turned mushy on him.
“You went on a tear and you ran your bloody car into a wall. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Not that,” Hoey snapped. “The job! How the hell did I end up dealing with the likes of that fucking yob the other night? I mean, it suddenly struck me…”
“Nolan?”
“So he’s been on your mind too. See? Here I am thinking, will Nolan get bail? Will Nolan do something like this again? Will someone nail him in prison? God Almighty!”
“Forget Nolan. I’m hardly in a mood to be sympathetic now with the crooked humour you’re in. You’re damn lucky you weren’t badly hurt. Or worse: you could’ve taken someone with you.”
Hoey turned away. His hands were fists by his sides. He seemed to be staring out the window into the yellow street-lit haze over the southern suburbs of Dublin.
“Lucky?” he said.
The word came back clearly from the glass to the Inspector. Hoey’s fists found their way to the window-sill. His body canted stiffly forward until his head touched the glass.
“I knew what I was doing. Or I thought I did. Sure I turned the wheel myself.”
Minogue let himself fall back in the chair. He closed his eyes.
CHAPTER FIVE
Look, Shea. It’s half-ten. Kathleen’s downstairs. I’d better go down and let her know what’s happening.”
Hoey gave the Inspector a bleak look. His coat had a dark stain across the lapel.
“Sign yourself out, will you,” Minogue went on. He still felt numbed. “I’ll meet you downstairs. Have you any more tests?”
Hoey shook his head and returned to combing his hair in front of the mirror.
“X-rays or anything? You weren’t concussed, were you?”
“No.”
“Pills you need?”
Hoey shrugged. Minogue watched him appraising his own battered face in the mirror. Hoey worked on a stray lick of hair over his ear. Minogue saw his colleague lose a battle to keep his hand from trembling as it remained poised over his head for several moments.
“Okay then?”
Hoey returned Minogue’s earnest look in the mirror for a moment before he took a step back and jammed his hands in his pockets.
“Jesus Christ,” he spat out. “I look terrible. I feel terrible. I’m not going. I don’t know. Can’t you leave me alone?”
“You missed a button there. Second one down on your shirt. Come on now, let’s go.”
Kathleen kept her shock well-hidden, Minogue thought. They walked to the car-park.
“Well, Shea,” she said as she waited for her husband to unlock the passenger side. “We’re right now, aren’t we?”
Hoey squinted at the cars in the car-park. “Well, Kathleen,” he murmured, “to tell you the truth, if I was right, I wouldn’t be here.”
Kathleen got into the car and gave her husband a look of alarm. Minogue grinned.
“That’s the style, Shea,” he said. Kathleen’s laugh was forced.
Minogue let the Fiat out onto Nutley and aimed it up toward the Bray Road. He began whistling softly between his teeth. Kathleen kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead until they stopped by the lights at Montrose. There she rallied and began working on Hoey’s embarrassment. She spoke in a tone of mock reprimand.
“Sure, what’s wrong with staying out in Kilmacud awhile? Himself here is at a bit of a loose end. Hang around, can’t you, and see that he doesn’t make an iijit of himself.”
Hoey sat back in his seat and began licking his bottom lip. Minogue eyed him in the mirror.
“Yes,” Kathleen went on, “Daithi’s room is going a-begging. You might as well…”
Minogue sensed the hesitation in her voice. She had almost said that Iseult’s room was available too, that Iseult and Pat… But that would be to admit aloud what she had yet to admit to herself.
“There’s the garden, you know,” she went on boldly. “There’s transplanting to be done before the winter proper. I must say now that I only like it for walking around in. But you people from the country, I suppose…?”
Minogue looked at the dashboard clock. It wasn’t too late to phone Kilmartin at home and have a pow-wow about this. Organise some leave for Hoey, park stuff with Murtagh. He resumed his Handel but hummed instead of whistled. He’d phone Herlighy, the psychiatrist, at home tonight too.
As the evening clouds retreated from the sky over Dublin that night, they took with them some of the yellow nimbus of light which had been reflected from the city below. The air grew colder. Although there was no moon, the summit of Two-Rock Mountain became sharp and purple under the stars. Hoey sat wrapped in an eiderdown by the window. He left the window open a crack with the ashtray next to it. He had taken his pills after the bath, but he did not feel tired. He watched two cats walk along the block wall that separated Minogues’ yard from the neighbours‘. A light breeze had the remaining leaves whispering dryly.
Hoey had no handkerchief and, as there were times when he couldn’t stop crying, he used a towel to wipe his
