“We’ll proceed with Naughton in Limerick this morning,” he said.
Crossan’s face seemed to lift as Hoey’s frown descended. The barrister flipped his wrist over and drew his cuff back from his watch.
“It’ll take you until dinner-time if you go to Limerick right now. I even have Naughton’s address here. Find out from him-”
“What do you think we should be finding?” Hoey asked.
“Ah, for Christ’s sake, don’t you start in on me now!” Crossan snapped. “Have ye forgotten everything we’ve talked about?”
Minogue repeated Hoey’s question. “What do you think we should be finding?”
Crossan spoke in a controlled, even tone.
“Garda incompetence. New evidence. Changes in testimony. Gaps in testimony. Inconsistencies in testimony. Don’t tell me that you decided to spend your off-time down here only because I put you up to it!”
“You’re right, I won’t,” said Minogue.
Crossan looked at his watch again and drew in a breath.
“When do you think you’ll get back from Limerick? I mean, how long do you think you’ll be…?”
Minogue was rubbing his eyes slowly and distractedly. He kept it up for a half-minute before he paused, opened his eyes and looked at Hoey.
“As long as it takes, counsellor,” he said.
Crossan bounded up from his chair, plucked the photocopy from the table and launched his lanky body toward the foyer.
“I’ll phone a taxi for ye this very minute,” Minogue heard him say.
“What a tricky bastard,” said Hoey.
Minogue shrugged. His anger was gone now.
“Well, a point in his favour has to be the way he’s put himself out with the Dalcais stuff,” Minogue offered. “But I just wish to God he had told us about his plans before Dan Howard told me.”
“Very tricky people down this part of the country,” said Hoey. “Still don’t trust him as much as…”
A yawn stole the rest of Hoey’s words. Minogue’s Fiat leaned into a bend on the dual carriageway that skirted Shannon Airport. The fog had given way to a blue sky. The sun was hard and bright on the windscreen of Minogue’s car. A jet passed low overhead, its shadow racing across the fields inland.
“No rest for the wicked,” said Hoey, and returned to looking out the window.
Minogue turned the mirror down until he saw the boot-lid bouncing against the rope he had been given to tie it down. His thoughts went to Naughton, and he recalled Naugton’s growl when he had phoned with a wrong- number yarn. Naughton was sixty-six. Still going strong, was Crossan’s arch description. Not bad for a drunkard, in other words. He thought of Hoey then. The Inspector’s misgivings broke free of their leash and tumbled into words.
“Shea, it just occurred to me that I may have drawn you into a big pile of…”
“What?”
Minogue tried to put some order on the words.
“I wonder if maybe I’m doing something very, very stupid indeed here.” The words dried up. His mind returned to the porpoises as the suburbs of Limerick joined up with the road. He imagined them smirking as they turned from the starlit harbours of the west of Ireland out to sea.
“Look, Shea, I know you’re far from keen at this stage. I could leave you off at the train station as long as you promise me-”
Startled, Hoey looked over at Minogue. The Inspector braked hard for a traffic light by the Gaelic Athletic grounds. They were a mile yet from the Sarsfield Bridge into Limerick.
“I mean, it’s nothing to me basically,” Minogue went on, “I can take it, but you-”
“I have my career to consider?”
“Well…”
“Well, what?” said Hoey.
Minogue started off from the light but forgot that he had left the car in third. The Fiat staggered and stalled.
“I don’t want to pull you down with me,” Minogue muttered. Hoey began to laugh. He tried to stop but he couldn’t.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Minogue knocked and inclined his head to the door. Naughton’s house was at the end of a terrace. Heavy curtains hung from the one window next to the door. The window wells were freshly painted with a thick cream gloss and the two upper windows had double-glazed aluminium frames. Minogue stepped back and looked at the upstairs window. Hoey was standing in the sunshine at the end of the terrace. The door opened abruptly and Minogue turned to face a tall man with a full head of white hair brushed back over a pink face. Two clear and piercing blue eyes stared into Minogue’s. A light scent of shaving soap and brilliantine came to the Inspector, followed by house smells of tea and a fry. Naughton had said something but Minogue hadn’t heard. He had been watching the harelip scar as Naughton had uttered the words.
“Hello there, now,” said Naughton again.
He was wide and big and his hands hung low alongside his thighs. There was something of the giant about him, Minogue thought, like those ex-RIC men he had known. The physical size of those precursors of the Gardai had been adduced to be one of the prime drivers of law enforcement until the guerilla warfare of the War of Independence had swept away any grudging respect accorded them.
“Good day to you now, Mr Naughton,” he began. “I’m Matt Minogue, a Guard…”
Naughton’s eyes were on Hoey now, who had sidled down to stand beside Minogue.
“…and this is my colleague, Seamus Hoey.”
Naughton folded his arms. Minogue looked at the bulk straining the jumper. A bit of a pot on him but by no means gone to seed. A bachelor, a retired Guard, who still wore a collar and tie under his jumper.
“Well, I haven’t met ye before,” said Naughton. He looked up and down the terrace. “Are yiz here on some kind of business?”
“We’re down from Ennis-”
“Are ye attached to Ennis station?”
“No, we’re not actually-”
“So where are yiz from then?”
Minogue paused and glanced at an old woman passing on the footpath behind them.
“Good morning, now, Mr Naughton,” she crowed.
“Isn’t it now,” said Naughton.
Minogue looked beyond Naughton into the house.
“Come in, I suppose,” said Naughton. “Come in.”
The front room was a musty parlour, spotlessly clean and unused. The Inspector sat on a hard-sprung sofa and looked around the room. There were photographs of men in Guard’s uniforms of thirty years ago, one of an old woman with the face of a mischievous child, bunched in a smile. The fireplace had been fitted with a gas burning unit complete with bogus glowing coals. A nest of tables squatted under the window. Between two cumbersome chairs stood a buffet with glass doors over a series of drawers.
“Ye’ll have something?” said Naughton.
He rubbed the back of his huge right hand with the thumb of his left. Minogue associated the gesture with big men who could never lose a teenage awkwardness about their size.
“Ah, no, you’re all right there, thanks,” said Minogue.
“Are yiz sure now? A smathan, even.”
The Inspector shook his head and stole a glance at Naughton’s face again as he made to sit down. If this was
