“Who called her to the stand, anyhow?”
“Tighe, the lawyer. By this stage he had nothing going for him except to chop down Jamesy’s responsibility as best he can. Paint the victim in as bad a light as you can without having judge or counsel call you on it-and avoid offending the jury either-and that can influence the sentencing.”
“Was she his girlfriend then?”
“She wasn’t really doing a line with Howard. She hung around in her own mousy, demure way.”
“Mousy?” Minogue could not keep from saying.
“Oh, I grant you she’s no longer mousy,” said Crossan. “She had her designs on him. But, sure, so did half the county. Dan was a class of, what would I say in these enlightened times…”
“A ladies’ man?”
Crossan’s grin beamed suddenly and then relapsed into a rueful stare at the patterns in the carpet.
“More like a whoremaster.”
“That’s a term of some weight,” said Minogue. “Even for a lawyer to utter.”
“You don’t say, now.”
“You mean, I take it, that it was all right for Dan Howard to play the field but Jane Clark, she was supposed to go by different rules of conduct?”
“Right,” Crossan replied with a clear hint of derision. “You don’t need informing on the mores of Catholic Ireland, do you?”
“What did you think of Jane Clark yourself?” Minogue asked.
“Trouble,” Crossan answered without hesitation. “A lot of trouble. But she was a very exotic bloom in these parts. Like one of those plants up above on the Burren, something that’d have the botanists drooling over it: how the hell did it get here and how the hell can it grow in the middle of all this… Oh sure, tourists come and go, but for one to stay and try and make a home of it around here? She was very talented. But hearing about her and that girl Eilo McInerny coloured things a bit even for me. Not because of what they did but because I knew the girl was no match for Jane Clark.”
Crossan picked up another corner of sandwich but dropped it abruptly. He curled his lip. “Look, even if she seduced half the village, the parish priest and the schoolgirls even-”
“Did she?”
“Don’t be an iijit. Of course she didn’t. But the way the testimony was given and used, it sounded like she was the divil incarnate. What I was saying is that Jane Clark was not the galvanised bitch she is remembered as.”
Minogue withdrew into his own muddled thoughts. Crossan poured more coffee. Hoey scratched himself slowly and carefully under his arm. Crossan’s long bony forearms escaped his cuffs and his hands moved expertly around the cup to grasp the spoon.
“You can actually say ‘bisexual’ now without having to duck your head,” Minogue mused.
“You don’t say,” Crossan drawled. “This young one, Eilo McInerny- a waif in from Ballygobackwards- eventually said that she had been dragooned into the whole lesbian thing. Seduced.”
“You have this McInerny girl’s whereabouts, don’t you?”
“Just about. It took me time, I can tell you. She went to England right after the trial, but she finally came back. She’s working in a hotel below in Tralee. Another casualty we forgot about, I suppose. A lousy enough life she had, skivvying in the hotel and no prospects. I don’t doubt but that Dan Howard might have tried knocking on her door by times too. But Tighe got her up on the stand to help hammer home the witch bit. The devil-woman, the man-eater.”
Crossan broke off to drink some of his coffee.
“So Tighe did a good hatchet job on Jane Clark, I suppose,” Minogue prodded.
“So he thought until the sentencing: a life sentence for a charge of manslaughter. That was the shocker. Sweeney, the judge, had a rep, but even Tighe didn’t expect Sweeney to hit that hard. That’s what I still can’t get over, if you want to know.”
“What?”
“You’d think one person couldn’t have all that bad luck land on them. Or at least poor Jamesy didn’t deserve all that went on. Look. He finds out that the one he thinks is his girlfriend, his ticket out of being a lost soul out on a farm in the back end of the bloody Burren, she has other interests. Gets Tighe, brand new banister on the Legal Aid panel, to defend him. And then, even if he had King Solomon in his comer, he draws bloody Sweeney as the judge for the trial-a notorious one-man morality squad. Maybe it’s no wonder Jamesy went under, gave up on the system.”
Crossan’s eyes were bulging over the rim of his cup when he finished. He steadied it with the fingertips of his left hand and turned to watch as three tourists stepped into the foyer.
“I’m willing to start with this Eilo McInerny,” said Minogue. “In Tralee, you said. Have you spoken to her?”
“Matter of fact, I did,” said Crossan. “I phoned her a few months back, asked her would she be willing to talk it over, what she remembered of the night and so on.”
“How’d she react?”
“Told me I was wasting me time-her time too.”
Minogue looked over at Hoey to find him busy trying to scratch out a stain on the knee of his trousers with his thumbnail.
“Let me try with her now, then,” said Minogue to Crossan.
“When, like?”
Minogue glanced at Hoey again.
“Today. This afternoon. Whenever. Why not?”
“I’ll have to make sure she’s still there,” said Crossan. “And I’d have to tell her what we’re about. That ye’re Guards and so on. No shillyshallying here. Proper disclosure.”
Minogue shrugged his concession. A lanky youth with a crew cut sharp over a slack, pimply face appeared in the foyer. Minogue watched the youth seek him out, his eyes shifting from Crossan to Hoey to himself and then settling back on him.
“There’s a phone call beyond for a Mr Minogue, a Guard.”
Minogue thanked him and rose.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Crossan. “I’ll try to get in touch with the hotel in Tralee right now. Would you drive down there this afternoon?”
“Sure, I will,” said the Inspector. He poked Hoey in the shoulder.
“Do you want to talk to the Killer instead?”
Hoey feigned a grin but it was one of aversion. He reached reflexively for his cigarettes. Crossan went in search of a phone. Minogue sloped over to the desk and was directed to a stool by the wall. He sat down and leaned against the wall.
“Yes, Jimmy,” he said, and held the phone away from his ear.
“Close, but not close enough.”
Minogue elbowed away from the wall with the surprise.
“I wasn’t expecting-”
“You have such high regard for journalists like Hynes that you fired him right in my face?”
Minogue tried desperately to gauge the current mood of Garda Commissioner Tynan.
“Ah now, John. Shorty Hynes is like that. I merely passed on some facts to him. He’s not my puppet, now.”
“He’s an nasty little gawker. What do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be off on your holidays.”
“Has Jim Kilmartin been in touch with you?”
“I was in touch with him,” said Tynan. “Ask me if it was before or after I received calls from Superintendent Tom Russell and Hynes.”
Jesus, I’m sunk, thought Minogue.
“You know Tom Russell, don’t you?” Tynan pressed on.
“Yes, I’ve met him briefly.”
