hard hats as the sod is turned for a factory to manufacture whats-its in Portaroe or Ennis or Gortaboher.
There was nothing providential about Sheila Hanratty’s success either. She gave Minogue the same sense of diligence and control as did her husband. Tolerating Crossan, knowing that he knew that she and her husband could outlast him, she went her own way. Were they going to remain childless, Minogue wondered with sudden pity? Maybe a shared sadness there had given them their composure and solidarity?
He draped the towel carefully on the rail. There on the wall to his left was a print, a scene of stones and grasses topped by the orb of a golden sun. He squinted at the print close up, but found no place that he recognised exactly. Then he thought of that warm evening twelve years ago, young men and women, not yet out of their careless years. A summer’s night with music spilling out into the night-street from the open doors and windows of the pub. The Portaree Inn, or Howard’s Hotel as Minogue had known it in his youth, had been uninspiring enough, but Tidy Howard had seen his chance and he had plumbed, nailed, illuminated and painted his way into presenting what tourists might imagine a traditional country inn could or should have looked like.
Minogue recalled the stone walls of the Portaree Inn shiny with coats of polyurethane, the light from brass lamps, their lustre factory-aged, glistening on the stone. Locals who had laughed laughed no more. Their sons found work building houses and fixing roads, pouring drink for visitors. Commerce in high gear had pounced on Portaree, and a population which had known only episodic bursts of comfort in the form of work for non-inheriting children leapt at the opportunities. Minogue had himself observed the prospering village on his many forays to his home county over the years. The disingenuity of the “traditional” being hawked in the Portaree Inn-the Inn and the Out of it, Mick still called it-and the ingenuity of Tidy Howard, by now a figure of stature in more ways than one, had impressed Minogue. He had returned to Dublin after those holidays unable or unwilling to join in his brother’s disparagement. Mick had carried on the farm and forced emigration was unknown to him, Minogue reasoned. Why be ashamed of wanting prosperity?
He shook himself out of his wonderings and left the bathroom. In the hall he heard Crossan’s characteristic rapid-fire tones barked out behind the living-room door. He stopped by the closed door and swept his fingers over the top of his fly for the third time, again to make certain that he had zipped it and would not make a complete iijit of himself in front of Sheila Howard. He look about the hallway again. The staircase spindles were clear-lacquered over a cherry-coloured varnish and the mahogany handrail curved as the staircase ascended. The hall door was a generous width, heavy between slim windows to both sides…
Minogue stopped his hand turning the knob and looked more intently toward one of the windows flanking the door. Gone, whatever it had been. A cat or a dog out by the cars? He let go of the door-handle and stepped across to the window. He stared at the pebbled drive where his Fiat was parked, stubby and down-at-heel next to the Audi. Light from above the hall door outside did little more than confirm the shapes of the cars and outline the low hedges nearby. But someone was out there.
His fingertips began to tingle and he held his breath. His mind could not fasten on anything beyond his own quickening heartbeat now. He stepped back from the window but kept his eyes on the narrow strip of glass. Half- formed images tore through his mind: the muzzle of a gun firing, the sense that the world in smithereens had been thrown at impossible speeds into the air, the bomb’s shock waves pounding his eardrums, the windscreen coming in at him like a lace tablecloth. His mouth turned chalky with the memory of his own near-fatal greeting from death. Sourness burned low in his throat and he heard his breath come out in a tight sigh.
He grasped the door handle, turned it sharply and stepped through the doorway. Crossan said all right to Howard who said the day after tomorrow and I was already in touch with Father O’Loughlin and he knew the Bourkes years ago… Eyes turned toward the Inspector and stayed on him. The broad window to his left, that graceful opening to the night outside which had pleased him before, now issued a silent shriek of alarm. Ice gathered in his chest.
“What is it?” someone said, a man’s voice.
Minogue looked: Howard. The window remained in his side vision.
“What’s wrong?” Crossan asked.
Minogue’s thoughts returned. Damn: he had walked by the phone in the hall. Go back?
“I’m not certain now,” he began. He tried to clear his throat. “I’m not sure now, but I think I saw someone outside.”
Howard’s eyes snapped into an intense stare.
“Does there be anyone around here at night?” Minogue asked.
“No,” said Howard.
The Inspector reached over to the strings and began pulling the curtains closed. Howard catapulted up from the sofa and grasped Sheila Howard’s arm. Crossan stood to a crouch.
“We’d do well to stay low,” Minogue whispered, and he sank to his knees. He put his hands out on the floor. He remembered playing horsey with Daithi and Iseult twenty years previously.
“Aren’t we being kind of stu-” Crossan began.
“No!” snapped Minogue. The Howards were now on all fours and Crossan was kneeling.
“The phone-” Minogue started to say when the curtains danced. An instant later, even before he heard the chat-chat-chat of automatic fire, pieces of glass batted and tore at the curtains before cascading onto the floor. More tears appeared in the curtain and it danced quicker, as though being whacked by invisible hands. Minogue felt his cheek against the wood floor. A part of his mind not swept away in panic wondered about ricochets. He opened his eyes and saw the spots being punched across the ceiling. Fragments of cornice and plaster flew in the air and dust swirled under the ceiling light. Then it was dark. Minogue heard a lampshade being flung against the wall. Small, sharp things rained down on him. Wood splintered and he heard the window frame chirrup before it disintegrated. Minogue clenched his eyelids tight then against the maelstrom of dust and minute flying shards and he began to wriggle toward the doorway. Through his knees and elbows he felt the dull percussive thump of bullets as they hit the walls and were stopped by the stone bulk within the plaster.
Several seconds passed before he realised that the shooting had stopped. The remains of the ceiling light kept swinging wildly in the lull. The torn curtains settled slowly against the window-sill. Odd fragments of glass and plaster fell at intervals, making Minogue’s heart leap each time. He steeled himself for the shooting to resume, for footsteps coming up the steps or running through the kitchen. He rubbed knuckles in his eye sockets and opened his eyes cautiously. Light from the hall sliced into the clouds of dust. He looked up at the wire of the ceiling light still swinging, the frayed curtains. Suddenly his body tensed: he heard running steps on the gravel outside.
They were going away from the house. As the sound of the footsteps receded, he began to hear gasps nearby. The fire glowed in the grate still, its yellow glow widened but dulled by the slowly falling dust. The room was now eerily calm.
“Are ye there?” Minogue whispered. An engine coughed down on the road and he listened intently, hoping that he could at least tell if it was a six- or a four-cylinder or something.
“I think so,” Howard answered.
“Yes,” said Sheila Howard.
The engine didn’t catch on the first turn of the key. When it did, the driver let out the clutch immediately and the tires bit in, leaving a rasping hiss as they scrambled for traction on the wet road.
“Is there anyone hurt?” Minogue hissed. No one answered.
“Alo!” Howard called out.
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Crossan replied before coughing. He elbowed up from the floor. “This isn’t my house at all,” he spluttered and coughed again.
“We’ll get out of here right away,” Minogue said. “They may have left something behind them that could do damage.”
Like figures in a dream, the Howards, with Crossan following, scurried like monkeys to the door.
“Stay well down still,” Minogue warned. He reached up from his crouch and switched off the hall light, then hurried the shambling, hopping figures toward the kitchen and the rear of the house.
CHAPTER TEN
Russell showed up an hour after the first Gardai from Ennis, and a half-hour after two carloads of Guards
