“Do you know what a thatched roof is?” Naughton sneered.
“But you were there when the fire was put out. And you were the first policeman in the door.”
“What if I was?”
“Where did you find her?”
“What difference does it make to you where she was?” Naughton’s voice rose. “She was gone to glory by then.”
“You were drinking that night, weren’t you, like the way you did and the way you still do,” said Minogue.
Naughton pushed away from the sink with his backside and came at Minogue. Hoey had anticipated it, but Naughton took him in his rush toward the Inspector. The three fell across the table and Minogue felt Naughton’s boozy breath rush out over his face. Hoey wriggled to the side, extricated himself and rolled off the edge of the table. Naughton was trying to clamber up on the table fully. His hand found Minogue’s throat and squeezed. Minogue yelped and tried to raise his arm but Naughton pinned it with his own. Hoey shouted at Naughton and grabbed him by the shoulders. Naughton kicked at Hoey who groaned as he tottered away, falling over a chair. Minogue’s eyes began to bulge and the grip on his throat turned to a stabbing pain. Naughton was wheezing and muttering under his breath. Minogue tried with his arm again but all he could do was thump Naughton on the head. Dimly he heard Hoey scrambling to get up. Naughton’s feral eyes darted over to Hoey and Minogue took his chance. He chopped with his free hand down inside Naughton’s elbow. Before the giant could straighten his arm again, Minogue’s head shot up and butted him. Naughton reared back with a grunt and fell groaning from the table. Minogue elbowed up slowly, the crack still resonating in his head.
“Jesus,” he heard Hoey say. He watched his colleague pull himself up crookedly, holding his crotch. Minogue gulped in air and rubbed his throat.
“Are you all right?” he said to Hoey.
“He kicked me in the nuts!” Hoey wheezed. “Me. A Guard did that to me!”
“Retired Guard,” said Minogue, still trying to catch his breath. He looked down at Naughton who was holding his head and muttering. Hoey suddenly kicked at Naughton.
“Shea!”
Hoey glared back at the Inspector. “If and he gets up and tries that on me again, I’ll give him what-ho!” said Hoey. “A fuckin’ oul’ hooligan.”
“Get outa my house,” Naughton whispered hoarsely from below. The stench of whiskey nauseated Minogue now. He beckoned to Hoey.
“Come on,” he said.
“This is only the start, whatever your name is,” said Naughton sitting up. “Yiz don’t know the trouble yiz are in.”
Minogue inclined an arm and Naughton took it.
“Sit yourself down now, Guard,” said Minogue. “We’ve had our spat and handed out our clouts.”
“You’ve more coming to you,” snapped Naughton. “The fat’s in the fire on you now. And you the big knob down from Dublin with your gutty moves like that!”
“What do you call kicking a Guard in the balls?”
“I was attacked!” shouted Naughton, but then grimaced and held his head. “And then your man here pulls that low stunt like that. The Ringsend kiss, by Christ!”
“Trying to choke the life out of me isn’t a great way to tell me what happened to Jane Clark,” said Minogue. Naughton groaned again and closed his eyes with a pain.
“There’s nothing to tell, you gobshite. Ask the man who killed her.”
Hoey still looked angry. Minogue nodded to a chair. Hoey sat with a delicate motion.
“I’m only sorry I didn’t get the chance to do exactly that,” said Minogue.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Jamesy Bourke got killed the other night. That’s what it means.”
Naughton looked up in pained disbelief. Hoey was almost hovering over the seat. Wheezing, Naughton clawed his way up off his knees, righted a chair and sat into it. Minogue plugged in the kettle and stepped back over the glass on the floor.
“Go ’way. You’re trying to cod me. Jamesy Bourke?”
“He was shot dead the other night. Yes, he was,” Minogue replied. “A German who thought he was shooting an IRA man with a gun in his fist. We haven’t been driving all over the west of Ireland here for the sole purpose of trying to cod you. What about some tea or something and a proper civilised conversation?”
“Fuck the tea so and give me something proper,” said Naughton.
“So. Who called the station that night?”
The hulking man’s tone turned suddenly gentle. He rubbed slowly at his head and his expression changed into something Minogue would later recall as a smile.
“Have you been digging into this a long time?”
“Awhile.”
“And what did yiz find?”
That faint smile held fast at the corners of Naughton’s mouth. His hand came away from the red swelling over his eye and, as though it were independent of him, began to massage his neck. He looked out the small window to the roof of what might have been an outdoor privy. A battered-looking ginger cat walked languorously across the corrugated surface, its shadow black on the sunlit grey. Minogue looked at Naughton’s hand stroking the bristling neck. People paid a lot of money for haircuts like Naughton’s these days, he thought.
“Did yiz meet up with Dan Howard at all?” murmured Naughton. The cat stretched and turned its eyes away from the sun.
“Yes, I did,” replied Minogue.
“Our home-grown statesman,” said Naughton to the window.
“He doesn’t claim to be,” said the Inspector.
Naughton wheeled on his heels from the window.
“ ‘He doesn’t claim to be.’ What do you know? Dan Howard’s a fucking child!”
Minogue felt an instinctive anger. To be young and unstamped with adult knowing was for Naughton contemptible.
“Nothing to his da, by Jesus,” Naughton went on. “But sure look at the da now. He’s like a cabbage or something, lying in the bed. Fed with a tube, like he’s being watered. Hah. I hear that Sheila Howard visits him more than does Dan himself. What does that tell you?”
“Have you seen Tidy Howard since he had the stroke?”
Naughton fixed a look on Minogue. There was condescension in it, hostility too. The kettle began to sigh and give low cracking sounds as the element began to disperse and move the water within.
“Mind your own fucking business.”
“Who phoned the station that night?”
Naughton made a pitying smile.
“Dan Howard’s not a man at all. Oh, he can talk the best you ever heard, along with the rest of them. But, sure, what’s talk? He can smile and play the game, and I don’t doubt that he’ll get elected again.”
Naughton returned to rubbing his swollen eyebrow. Thwarted yet in his efforts to come to grips with this man, Minogue still sensed something to the side of Naughton’s contempt.
“Dan Howard doesn’t know what made him,” Naughton murmured. “That’s why he’ll never be the man his father was.” He looked sideways at Hoey before glaring at Minogue.
“I don’t know about you but this pal of yours here, I can tell. Soft, like the rest of ’em his age. Complaining about getting a tap in the bollocks. But you”-Naughton closed one eye and squinted at the Inspector-“one minute you’re all business and the next minute you’re asking for tea! Maybe you’re a fuckin’ head-case or a good one gone soft yourself. No balls, hah?”
To Minogue, Naughton seemed to be both deflated and made even more monstrous at the same time. Maybe he had had his morning gargle and by now the drink had set free the impulses and thoughts of a bachelor too long unshackled from the daily routines of being a Guard.
“You didn’t know Bridie Howard. How could you?” Naughton went on in a monotone. “She should have gone to the nuns the way she wanted to before she up and married a man like Tidy Howard. A dried-up bitch and I don’t
