“Funny you’d pick them, now,” said Minogue. “My money’d be on Clare.”
“Safe home to ye, now,” said Russell, and turned on his heel.
Minogue looked back up the short avenue which led from Abbey Street into Ennis Garda Station. Solid, he thought, almost like a fortress. Gates and a house fit to stop any number of pike-bearing rebels when the gentry had built it as Abbeyfield House, two hundred and fifty years ago.
“Come on, will you,” barked Crossan. “Let’s not stand here gawking like wallflowers that were stood up on a date. I have work to do.”
“Well, the Mercedes is gone,” said Hoey.
“I’ll bet you Russell kept us there, lecturing, so as this cowboy German could get his bail fixed and have himself whisked away in that bloody Mercedes.”
A sudden gust blew grit down the street into Minogue’s face. He knew then what he would do. He followed Crossan.
“I’d like to go back in there and annoy that bollocks,” the lawyer said. “But where would that get us? A brick wall. Jesus!”
The swollen eyes widened even further, and Minogue took a step back. The sharp, cool air had greyed the barrister’s skin and watered his eyes. They reminded Minogue of some picture, one from his children’s storybooks.
“Not a damn word about charges, about whether he’s to stay in custody,” Crossan went on. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this Spillner fella is on his way to Shannon Airport this very minute.”
“Let’s go somewhere and sit down and drink a cup of coffee,” said Minogue. “Have a think and a chat. I have a phone call to make.”
Crossan blew out smoke and pointed conclusively at the curb.
A blue Ford Sierra with its antennae waving came down the avenue. Russell nodded to them from the passenger seat before the car picked up speed.
“Just happened to be there,” said Hoey.
Minogue drew his coat around him and looked up at the brown and grey clouds massed over the town. The River Fergus hissed over a weir, grey itself and flat, its banks lined with blackening leaves.
He studied the roof lines and the windows along Abbey Street.
“Time to stir the pot, I think,” he murmured. “Throw in another ingredient. I need a phone.”
Minogue sat next to Crossan and looked at the plate of sandwiches.
“Where’s Shea gone?”
“Off to get fags,” said Crossan. “Here, what happened to him anyway?”
“He’s recuperating from a recent accident.”
“Would he need to be irrigating his throat too with a few jars, maybe? I for one certainly feel the need this very minute.”
Minogue gave Crossan a lingering look to drive home the hint.
“No. The few jars are definitely not part of the cure,” Minogue said, and he bit into a sandwich.
“What’s this ‘ingredient’ you were talking about?”
“I phoned a man I wouldn’t ordinarily phone. You may know him. Shorty Hynes.”
“Not that bloody ghoul that writes for the Indo, is it? The murder-and-mayhem fella? Do you know him?”
The Inspector nodded. “I certainly do. He’s a royal pain in the arse. He’ll do nicely, I imagine.”
“Do what?”
“He’ll be phoning the Garda Commissioner about this fella Spillner. Why his bail might allow him to hightail it off to Germany courtesy of the German Embassy.”
“Oho,” Crossan snorted. “Good move there, Guard. The proverbial leak. I didn’t think you had it in you. You might as well fill in your request for asylum here in Clare after a stunt like that.”
“The public interest and the right to know, counsellor.”
Minogue took another bite and wondered how long it would take for Kilmartin to phone. Half an hour, he guessed. Hoey returned, tearing the cellophane from a packet of Majors.
“Let’s go over what we have, so far,” said Minogue. “See where the gaps might be.”
He rearranged the photocopies on the table and looked to Crossan.
“Will you start?”
“All right. We have the summary and copies of the book of evidence used to prosecute him.”
“Yep,” said Minogue. “All I found were copies of two Dublin newspapers’ coverage. Nothing new.”
“We all know that no appeal launched means no transcript?” Crossan asked.
Minogue nodded. “The full steno record is above in the strong-room in the Criminal Court in Green Street,” he said.
“Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here, but,” said Hoey, “why didn’t Bourke launch an appeal if the prosecution case was shaky? Didn’t his lawyer push him about an appeal, anyway?”
“Well, Jamesy recalled Tighe talking to him about it,” said Crossan. “And I talked to Tighe about it. According to him, Jamesy turned it down. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Bourke was a poet, you have to understand, and he had to have his way right to the end,’ says Tighe to me.”
“What does that mean, the poet thing?” asked Minogue.
“To pay the price maybe,” Crossan replied. “Give one’s life in lieu, that sort of grand gesture.”
“He wanted to be punished for killing his sweetheart, like?” Hoey asked.
The lawyer looked squarely at Hoey.
“A crooked kind of grandeur in this day and age, you’re thinking?”
Hoey’s mouth hung slightly open. A stream of smoke cascaded slowly over his lower lip as he squinted at the barrister. Crossan took a deep breath, blew it out slowly from puffed cheeks and sat back in his chair.
“Something broke inside Jamesy the first day of the trial, Tighe said. I believe that. It was like he gave up. And that attitude stayed with him for a long time, he told me.”
“Why’d he give up?” Minogue asked. “The second day, you said.”
“Okay. Tighe entered the not-guilty plea. The prosecution is going to use circumstantial evidence to put Jamesy there with the matches in his hand and corroboration as regards a motive. State gets up, Tighe told me, and presents witnesses: the Guard, Naughton. Tighe’s hands are tied in a sense because Jamesy had blacked out. But Tighe knows what he wants out of the not-guilty; the worst he can get, he figures, is manslaughter. Pucks of diminished responsibility and everything else. So far, so good. Jamesy was very straight with Tighe, said he couldn’t remember a damn thing, yes, he was really angry at Jane Clark, etcetera. So Tighe is sailing along nicely until the State gets witnesses talking about Jane Clark. The judge didn’t rule many of them out of order, Tighe remembers. He was new to the job and wasn’t as full of vinegar as maybe he should have been. To make a long story short, Jamesy Bourke erupts right there in the court.”
“He’s embarrassed at the information coming out?” Hoey asked.
“Oh, Christ, man, more than that-way more,” said Crossan. “‘Who was anyone here to judge her…bunch of hypocrites…always out to get him.’ The whole bit. Tighe tries to calm him down but makes a big mistake. He confides to Jamesy that it’s fine by him to have comment on Jane Clark’s character because that’ll help. Provocation, track record, bad influence, hashish-you can make that into anything, really. Jamesy sees red now. He was never the willing fool, he tells Tighe. Furthermore, he tells Tighe that he will-and Tighe remembers the exact words-knock his fucking block off if he has any part in sullying the name of Jane Clark.”
Crossan sat back and looked from Minogue to Hoey and back.
“So there he is in open court displaying the personality and behaviour a judge and jury scrutinise all the more keenly when there’s so much hanging on circumstantial evidence anyway,” said Minogue.
“The nail on the head,” said Crossan. “From then on, Jamesy gave up on it. So Tighe says.”
“So what did Tighe do?” Hoey asked.
“He did his best, I suppose, but maybe he lacked the experience. Maybe Jamesy threw him off track so much that… Well, maybe it’s in the full trial record that Tighe at least tried to hammer at the Guards or got some leverage out of the post-mortem report or something. Tighe actually ended up calling witnesses or cross-examining them as to Jane Clark’s mode of living up at the cottage.”
