“Well, because you’re not a gobshite Guard-at least not according to your pal here-”
Both Minogue and Eilo McInerny looked over at Hoey. The detective examined his nails. His hands were trembling again, Minogue saw. He stared at Hoey’s forehead, willing him to look up.
“-who tells me you’re different, to the extent that you’re having rows with even the Guards in Ennis about Jamesy Bourke. Now that is something. And now I hear from him here that you’re ready to move heaven and hell to get at what happened to Jane.” Her eyes stayed on Hoey. He glanced at Minogue and looked out the window. “The oddest pair I’ve ever come across,” she murmured. “Ye remind me of some story I heard and I was in school-I forget it now. Some fool and his pal going around the country looking to fix things. Making iijits of themselves, it turned out. And me the iijit here too now, about to be taken in by ye. It’s the right fool I am, God help me, and I’ll never be cured of it.”
“Look here,” said Minogue. “We’re not out to cod anyone.”
She seemed not to have heard him. A smile began to form at the sides of her mouth. “After all I’ve been through… It must be the look of your man’s face here.” She turned to Minogue and her eyes narrowed. “Well, I’ll tell you a few things now. So listen. Gimme another one of those Majors. You. Shea. What’s-your-name.”
Eilo McInerny hammered in the cigarette lighter and settled back into the seat with a sigh. She concentrated on the lighter knob, her hand poised for it to pop out.
“You know how I was treated on the stand when I was called,” she began. “I was working that night. Saw Howard and Bourke getting plastered and the rest of it. But there’s one thing that never came up at the trial and I kept it to myself until after.” The lighter popped and she grasped it.
“I remember”-she paused, speaking through the smoke-“I remember thinking to myself that I could keep it up my sleeve. I thought of it as my ticket out of there.” Her eye watered from the smoke and she rubbed at it with a soft clicking sound.
“I went up to the bitch and I told her what I’d heard and what I’d seen, with her and Tidy Howard having the row that night. I let her think what she liked, that I had heard what they had been rowing about. She said nothing, just looked at me like I was some class of a lower form of life. That was her way, of course.” Into Minogue’s mind shot the image of Sheila Howard’s face.
“Yeah,” she murmured between her teeth. “Looked down her nose at me. Said nothing. But I knew there was something fishy going on. The next day, ould Tidy takes me aside and asks me if I had ever thought of bettering myself. Whatever the hell that meant. Would I try London, says he. He’d pay my way and give me the address of a landlady, as well as some money to get me started in digs there and so on. I’d think about it, says I.” She coughed and shifted around in the seat.
“Next day, a Guard-Doyle-came by and told me that I’d be asked to be a witness at the trial because Jamesy Bourke was after being charged. I was to stay around because the trial’d come up within a few months. Sure enough, it did. Like an iijit, I thought I’d just be asked about what I saw in the pub that night. But I walked into an ambush. And you know the rest. I came back to the hotel in a flood of tears-raging mad, I was too, and frightened. Then in came this fella, you probably don’t know him-a kind of a do-for, a crony of Howard-and he says the dirtiest things. About me, about Jane Clark. Says he doesn’t want to walk the same streets of the same village where I live.”
“Who was he?” Hoey asked.
“A lug. He came into the bar a fair bit. Duignan…Day-God, it goes to show you that I can’t remember-”
“Deegan?” said Minogue. “Big, running to fat?”
“Deegan, yes. I hardly knew him. He did odd jobs and he rented farmland from the Howards, I heard. So there it was: Get out of town. After your man Deegan had gone, in comes Tidy himself, with an envelope of money and an address. ‘Twould be better for all concerned,’ says he. Liar. Bastard. Pig. There was a thousand quid in the envelope. I couldn’t believe it. I was always sure that it was me saying what I said to her ladyship got me the ticket out.”
His headache was gone. He kept his eyes on Eilo McInerny’s broad back as she trudged up the steps into the hotel. Minogue imagined her body in a rococo painting of a goddess reclining in a glade. With her hand on the door, she looked back at the two policemen before flicking the cigarette over the roof of the Fiat. Hoey waved tentatively and let his hand drop into his lap.
“You told her what had happened to you?”
Hoey nodded.
“Why?”
Hoey rubbed at the side of his nose. “She’s been through a lot. I sort of thought that she needed to know that we’re not per-well, I mean, that we were all looking for a cure for something. That I was, I mean.”
“We,” said Minogue. “You were right the first time.”
Hoey raised a hand as if to make a point but let it drop again.
“If only Tidy Howard could-” he began.
Minogue shook his head.
“What I want to know is whether Dan Howard knew anything about all this.”
“He must,” said Hoey. “He’s married to the woman, for God’s sake. Married people don’t keep secrets, like.”
Minogue laughed aloud.
“What’s so funny?”
“The bit about married people.”
Hoey’s tone suggested irritation as well as embarrassment. “Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?”
Minogue started up the Fiat to distract himself from laughing again. Hoey lit another cigarette, coughed and rolled down the window. A lorry towing a trailer full of pigs stopped next to the car. Their trotters scrambling on the wood, their squeals and the smell of pig shit made Hoey roll up the window again. The lorry moved off slowly. Minogue drove around the corner and switched off the engine.
“What’s the matter?” said Hoey.
“Have to think out loud for a minute. That night: Eilo’s working and she sees Dan Howard and Jamesy Bourke drunk in the bar. She remarks to herself that there’s a lot of drink in front of Bourke. Later on she remembers seeing Sheila Hanratty and her friends. Then Eilo’s off about the place, ‘working’-which means she went out to a storehouse for a smoke and a drink from a bottle of vodka she kept out there. She sees Sheila Hanratty come across the yard after Tidy Howard and they’re arguing. Naturally she hides. She doesn’t hear what they’re squabbling about but she’s surprised that Sheila Hanratty should be shouting at Dan Howard’s father.”
“But she does hear one thing that Tidy shouts at her: ‘You live your life, I’ll live mine.’”
“And some bad language from the both of them. Surprised her to hear Sheila Hanratty like that. Had the name of being well-reared.”
“Right. Sheila Hanratty walks off in a huff. Eilo is able to get out of her hidey-hole, and she goes back in to help clear the bar. She follows Sheila Hanratty.”
Hoey nodded.
“And the same Sheila Hanratty goes through the bar and straight out the door onto the street.” Minogue looked to Hoey for comment but his colleague merely considered the tip of his cigarette.
“This is half-ten, now,” Minogue went on. “There’s another hour before the pub closes. Come closing-time, Eilo sees that she’s back, and she’s in a buzz around the boyos up at the bar. The same boyos are well and truly pissed by this time. Pretty soon afterwards they’re out on the street and Sheila Hanratty drives Dan home.”
“Right,” murmured Hoey. “The Howards didn’t live above the place.”
“Here’s my question: If Dan Howard can’t leg it the half-mile or so back to his house, how can Jamesy Bourke walk as far as Jane Clark’s cottage? If Bourke is as far gone as Dan Howard, don’t you know.”
“I don’t know,” Hoey offered. “Nobody knows. Bourke himself didn’t know.”
“Back away from that for a minute. How do we know that Sheila Hanratty actually went anywhere after her kerfuffle with Tidy Howard? Eilo says she saw her go out the door. Just assumed she got into the car. But she might have driven around the corner and come back to the bar directly. She might have gone to get something in the car. Her handbag or something. Then again, she might have been upset or the like, and needed…”
The thought of Sheila Howard distraught over something, using bad language, gave Minogue a feeling of faint
