Minogue clenched his teeth. The Chief Inspector tapped a cigarette against the packet.
“You took me on, Jimmy. Remember?”
“You never tried to do yourself in, man! You had a lot going for you back then. Never looked back either, if I may be so bold as to remark.”
“Shea has a lot going for him.”
Kilmartin spoke as though he hadn’t heard Minogue.
“Never one to lay his cards on the table, Hoey. I mean, I like him and all the rest of it. He’s done great work. But we can’t have things jumping out of the woodwork at us. Especially these days.”
Kilmartin was still now, his cigarette poised above the box. Minogue cast a glance at his colleague. The Chief Inspector stood up and stretched. Then he stood back on his heels and scratched across his belly. He had tried to keep his stomach in over the years, but his frame-his gait, his manner, his words-all mocked the idea of containment.
“The last cases were ugly, to say the least,” said Minogue. “Maybe Shea couldn’t leave them behind him in the Squad room. The pressure-”
“Oi, oi! What’s this, mister?” Kilmartin waded in. “A fucking sermon? Don’t talk to me about pressure! My insides are like the AA map to pressure! There’s surgeons building holiday homes and buying Jags and retiring early with what stress has done to my insides. Hoey doesn’t have to answer to the public and those fucking jackals in the media-I do. How many people do you know who could take that kind of pressure?”
Minogue nodded his head and pretended to listen. Kilmartin concluded his peroration and tapped him on the shoulder. The Inspector looked through the window at a gap in the clouds. He decided to drive along the seafront by Sandymount on his way home.
Kilmartin grunted and raised a conciliatory arm as if to conjure away the stupidity of those who could never understand him. Minogue knew that his colleague was coming down from his vituperative peak.
“I mean to say, Matt. We’re getting it from both sides, man.”
Minogue decided it was time to light a fuse.
“Absolutely,” he murmured. “Never more important to stick together than now.”
“Definitely,” Kilmartin declared, and tapped his forehead with his cigarette. “As long as we’re 100 per cent upstairs. The lift has to go to the top floor in our line of work, Matt, and don’t forget it.”
Kilmartin lit his cigarette. It was time, Minogue decided.
“By the way. Bumped into Tynan the other day.”
Kilmartin turned around one-eyed through the smoke. He stared at his colleague.
“Told me he’d pay us a visit,” Minogue added. “To, em, throw a few ideas around.”
“You don’t say, now. Tell him, if it’s not too much trouble, to throw his ideas out the shagging window, would you? They’re giving me heartburn.”
“I’ll see what he has in mind, I suppose, later on sometime.”
“Sometime? Jesus Christ, Matty, don’t pretend it was the dog that farted! Ever so sly, you drop this in my lap. What the hell does Tynan want? Come on now!”
Minogue shrugged and looked back into Kilmartin’s stony glare.
“Wait a minute there, you. Whoa right there. What are you trying to tell me? That there’s some connection between Hoey making a gobshite out of himself and Tynan’s blackguarding? Call a spade a spade, man!”
Minogue looked Kilmartin up and down before reaching into the cache of phrases he had built up over the years to deal with the likes of James Kilmartin. He allowed his eyes to open wide and he spoke in a whisper.
“Good God, Jim, what sort of man do you think I am?”
Kilmartin put his hands up.
“Oh, Christ, will you listen to that? Oi! Don’t piss on my shoes and then tell me it’s raining. Why did you wait until now to tell me that Tynan’s on the prowl our way? Is this what loyalty means to you? That you’ll run to Tynan if I don’t cover for Hoey here?”
Fully inflated now, the Chief Inspector disdained further words. He shook his head in disgust as he moved around the office. Minogue wondered if Eilis were recording all this.
“You’ve known me long enough, bucko,” Kilmartin resumed in a low growl. “I’m surprised at you. I eat threats and then I spit them out.”
“I sort of thought it’d be nice to, you know, get an idea of what’s on Tynan’s mind.”
Kilmartin spun on his heel.
“What the hell does that mean? Aren’t you in here to con me into something for Hoey?”
“You know Tynan’s under pressure to disperse us, Jim.”
“Thanks for the tip there, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t know. Tynan’s top dog, in case you didn’t know. He tells us all when to jump. Frigging Tynan. What’s his thing, Tynan? Jesus, I still can’t get a fix on him. The bastard.”
Kilmartin stopped by the window. The two policemen fell to watching this patch of the world.
“Listen, Matt,” Kilmartin said at last. “I’m not questioning your motives. You’re saying to me keep Hoey aboard or else-”
“-it’s not-”
“Shut up. I know what you’re saying better than you seem to. I’m saying to you that I’ll weigh things in the balance as I decide. Like the quality of the job you do on Tynan.”
“What job exactly?”
“You know what I mean. Get Tynan off my back. The Squad’s back. Maybe he doesn’t believe me when I tell him. You try it. Tell him the Guards down the country would make a pig’s mickey of a murder investigation. Tell him. Show him.”
For an instant, Minogue saw Bourke’s shadowed face in the sun outside the hotel in Ennis. He watched Kilmartin grinding his cigarette into the ashtray.
“I’m going to look around in the files,” he said, and rose from the chair. “Pretend I’m not here.”
Minogue didn’t need to look away from the riot of sunshine to know that Kilmartin’s face was telling him he wished that were indeed so.
Fifteen minutes later, Kilmartin stopped by Minogue. The Inspector stayed on his hunkers by the filing cabinet, ignoring Kilmartin for the most part.
“What are you looking for? I probably know it already.”
“Negative, Jimmy. Remember, I’m not here.”
Minogue’s eyes darted to the thumbed-back folder as his fingers dawdled through the files. He held the folder with his left hand and reached in with his right to turn back the tag.
“Bingo,” he whispered.
Kilmartin was lighting a tigarillo. Minogue reached down, loosened the folder from the press of its neighbours and stood up. He kicked the drawer shut while Kilmartin blew gusts of smoke toward the ceiling. Minogue cleared a path through the smoke with his free hand.
“Well, seeing as there’s nobody here,” said Kilmartin.
Minogue guessed from the forced tone that Kilmartin had probably squeezed out a sneaky fart.
“That’s an old file copy, that. Wasn’t our work. Divisional HQ file. What are you looking for?”
Minogue leaned against a cabinet and scanned the summary of the judgement. As he did, Kilmartin’s bygone fart insinuated itself into his awareness. The Inspector swore under his breath, held his breath and stood.
“Well?” said Kilmartin, and followed Minogue.
The Inspector turned on him.
“Honour of God, Jim, don’t fart in here at least. Show a bit of mercy, man.”
Kilmartin leered around his cigar.
“Tell me what you’re up to, so.”
“This case here. I just wanted to look over the summary.”
“To what end, Mr Trick-of-the-Loop?”
“Maybe the Tynan one,” Minogue murmured. “Eventually. A long shot.”
He sat down and flicked slowly through the photocopies. He jotted the names down as he came across them. Dan Howard, Sheila Hanratty, Garda Tom Naughton. Sergeant Raymond Doyle, sergeant in the station in Portaree.
