face. He worried about waking the Minogues and that, ridiculously, made him cry even more than thinking about Aine. He had grown into the habit of imagining her as his wife in future years. How had he done that? When had he started? For long stretches of time that night he was certain there was no future, but then some indistinct, wishful feeling would crawl into his chest.
He shivered and drew the eiderdown tighter. The sky was full of stars and they held his fascination for a long time. He remembered them as a child just being there, company for wonder and excitements like Hallowe’en and Christmas, familiar and near at hand, like a ceiling. Now they seemed impossibly far. As though the sky were no longer a roof over the world but an opening to confusion and indifferent space. The lid had come off his own world, he thought, the roof torn off the house. He thought of light-years, of stars exploded these millions of years but whose light had only lately reached earth. Seeing them in the night sky when they no longer really existed.
His mind moved wearily through memories. They flared and died and flared again around his heart. He craved a drink of neat whiskey, and he panicked at the thought of a future without a drink. The stitches over his eyebrow began to feel hot and his eyes seemed to swell even more. He tried to picture Africa: huts and black people smiling. Kids singing or clapping for their teacher. Aine. How hot would it be? He lay down then. Did they have lions and stuff in Zimbabwe?
Minogue parked in Dawson Street, and he and Hoey legged it smartly across to Bewleys in Grafton Street. The sky was blue, it was not yet nine o’clock and Dublin was at its best. Hoey’s face drew stares. One child pulled on her mother’s arm and pointed at him.
“A bit of everything,” Minogue urged the waitress. “We’re in from Kilmacud and we’re demented with the hunger.”
The Inspector was obliged to eat most of Hoey’s breakfast. Hoey tried a second cup of coffee, lit another cigarette and waited for Minogue to answer a question he had posed about the psychiatrist, Herlighy.
“Yes, the one I had. Just a chat. He knows Guards. Size him up. Then, if you think he’s okay…”
Hoey blew a thin stream of smoke out under his lip.
“Don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing,” he murmured.
“And don’t you be worrying about the Killer. I’ll push him around. He’ll be all right. Really.”
Hoey gave a snort. The Inspector concentrated on his saucer.
“You won’t know yourself in a while, I’m telling you, Shea.”
Hoey let smoke stream out his nostrils.
“I thought the whole idea was to know yourself better,” he muttered. “Or stuff like that.”
“No doubt,” Minogue shrugged. He chewed on the tail of a fatty rasher while he searched for a rebuttal which might buoy Hoey.
Hoey cleared his throat again and looked warily around the restaurant.
“He’ll want to know about the love-life and the da and the ma and the rest of it, no doubt.”
“What?”
Hoey’s gaze had settled on a table where five women sat smoking and laughing over coffee.
“Herlighy,” said Hoey. “The shrink.”
“Oh, yes.” Minogue felt his body ease back into the chair. “Yes. Probably, I mean. And he may ask you what you want. How you see yourself after this, you know…”
Hoey pushed a butt to the rim of the ashtray.
“He didn’t push the church at me, you’ll be glad to hear,” said Minogue.
“Huh,” sighed Hoey. “I’m not much on the church and devotions this long time, I can tell you. Even with Aine and the lay missionary thing out beyond in Zimbabwe.”
He paused to take a drag on a fresh cigarette.
“We had rows about it. I asked her what the hell the Church could do for people in Africa. Christ, the damage we’ve done out there already. The white people, I mean. Not to speak of the famines and poverty. Do you want to hear her answer? This’ll give you an idea of how it went sour.”
Minogue said nothing.
“She said I had seen too much of the bad side of people. In the job. All I know is that I’m not about to be running up to hug the altar rails at this stage.”
Minogue was relieved when the talk lapsed. Hoey sat forward in his chair, an elbow on the table, while he stared out at the floor. Minogue recalled people, notably Kilmartin, taking pride in the missionary zeal of the Irish abroad. Television programmes on catastrophes in Africa always seemed to interview Irishmen and women there.
Hoey breathed out heavily.
“Africa,” he said, and turned his one good eye back on Minogue. “I read where we’re all from Africa. The one mother or something like that.”
The Inspector thought of the children’s swollen bellies he had seen on the poster in Galway city.
“Here, Shea. It’ll take you the best part of fifteen minutes to get to his office. I’ll be waiting for you at the gates of the National Gallery at twelve.”
Hoey rose slowly from the table, patted his pockets for his cigarettes and then followed a meandering path around tables toward the exit. Minogue followed him, noting the head and shoulders down on Hoey as he threaded through to the doors.
Kilmartin was cagey. Solicitous and polite, his suspicion masked, he slouched in his chair and waited for a cue from Minogue.
“So there,” Minogue said. “He’s going to stay with us a few days until this gets sorted out.”
“Jesus,” said the Chief Inspector. “He looked a bit shot at the other day, I must say. I don’t mind telling you that I was on the point of taking him aside and…”
Minogue fingered change in his pocket and looked out the window of Kilmartin’s office. Clouds from the west ran low over the city.
“I’m on holidays, remember. All I want is for Shea not to get trampled on.”
“Oi! Don’t get on your high horse, mister. You know, and I know, that we can’t overlook things like this. I only wish he’d so much as, you know, hinted-”
“Maybe he did and we didn’t read it.”
“You sound like you’re blaming the world and his mother for this. That he was bamboozled, like. More excuses.”
Minogue ignored Kilmartin’s provocation.
“You’ll set up a leave of absence for him, will you?” he said.
Kilmartin’s tone turned righteous.
“Course I will,” he replied. “We look after our own.”
The Chief Inspector’s eyes slid around the room before lighting back on Minogue. He loosened his tie. His hand strayed to his collar and began stroking his neck.
“Think he’ll try it again, do you?”
“Try what?”
“He tried to top himself, man. Don’t play me for a gobshite here, I all right?”
Minogue held his breath. A Guard at the scene had probably let his suspicions slip and the remark had found its way to Kilmartin.
“Won’t be the same again, that goes without saying,” Kilmartin added.
“What won’t be?”
Kilmartin flung a glare at his friend.
“He won’t be! Hoey. The fella who is as of this moment hiding behind your bloody skirt!”
Minogue knew he mustn’t goad Kilmartin now.
“It’s a good thing he won’t be the same again,” he began. “Who’d want to be the same again? All hemmed in, at the end of his tether. It’s out in the open now. Between the people who care about him, I mean.”
Kilmartin’s eyes took on a glint.
“God, you’re the cute hoor. Out in the open is right. That’s the trouble! Lamb of Jesus, Matt, I can’t have a head-case on staff!”
