but not unpleasant aversion.
“She might have come back in a matter of minutes. Eilo mightn’t have seen her until later,” Hoey was saying.
“Yes.” Minogue was still mired in his sliding thoughts.
“Then again,” Hoey added with unmistakable irony, “it’d be nice to know where she actually did go, and for how long.”
Minogue awakened to Hoey’s mood and glanced across at him.
“Yes and no, Shea. There’s Crossan taking digs at the Howards. I’m far from satisfied that Crossan is as pure as the driven snow here. He may be the happier man to see Dan Howard and Sheila Howard with plenty of mud on them.”
“You’re lumping Eilo McInerny in there too?”
“It struck me that there’d be a certain, what can I call it, a certain relish that Eilo’d enjoy if the Howards, Sheila Howard included, got in the way of scandal.”
“You think she’s a muck-raker.”
“That’s not what I said. I’m saying that she could put a cast on her recollections. I’m wondering…I’m wondering exactly what Crossan told her the times he was talking to her recently. Maybe Crossan sort of enlisted her-not outright hired her, I mean, but-”
“Crossan? You don’t believe her, then.”
“I’m saying that she might be embellishing. She didn’t actually hear the conversation between Tidy Howard and Sheila Hanratty. And she didn’t actually see her drive off, much less where.”
“All right,” said Hoey. He blew out under his upper lip. “All right. But she didn’t claim to have seen or heard everything.”
The afternoon sun was just above the rooftops now, and the copper hint of evening was already on the streets. The sun had warmed the car’s interior and brought up the smell of cigarette ash even stronger. Hoey had become more fidgety.
“Crossan,” said Hoey. “You’ve got him in your sights, haven’t you?”
Minogue nodded.
“Back to the money thing, then,” Hoey tried. “She says that Tidy Howard gave her money for the train and then for digs over in London. A lot of money. Maybe because he had her on his conscience?”
“Take-it-or-leave-it type of deal?” said Minogue.
“Right. He rapes her and then later he kicks her out after throwing a bit of money at her. But the way she talks about him, it wasn’t in character for him to give a damn about that sort of thing. Why did he wait until after that night to talk her into going away?”
“Bears out her version of why she got the money, all right.”
“Yeah. The main reason was that she knew that something was going on that night,” said Hoey. He sat forward and began counting on his fingers.
“Look. She sees Tidy Howard and Sheila Hanratty having some kind of row. Sheila storms out, obviously not getting the answer she wants. She goes somewhere. When Eilo sees her again, she’s back in the bar looking a lot less glamorous than the first time she appeared. We have to go after her. Sheila Howard.”
Minogue took a deep breath and looked at his watch. “With what?”
“Naughton got paid off-”
“Can’t prove a damn thing now, and you know it.”
Minogue’s shirt-collar began to irritate his neck. The sun came around the door-pillar. There was a glint in Hoey’s eyes and his fingers moved the cigarette around quickly.
“Ask Mr and Mrs Howard,” he growled. “Round two. This time put the squeeze on ’em.”
Minogue longed for a cup of coffee, to be alone for a while. A vague apprehension had taken the place of the emptiness, itself part of the leftovers of shock. Hoey scratched his bottom lip with his thumbnail. The Inspector slid deeper into his seat and looked down the street.
The afternoon light had stretched the shadows across the street. They had begun their relentless ascent on the buildings to the western side. Soon the roofs, the aerials and the chimneys would take the glare all to themselves and the street below would fall into darker shadow. Gold and bronze had already taken fire in several windows. Minogue watched a mother pushing her pram toward the car. Her face was set firm as if she had just had news that disappointed her. She stopped the pram and called out to a boy crying on the footpath behind her. The boy stood staunchly with his face contorted.
“All right so, bye-bye,” the woman called out.
She was too tired to be really angry, Minogue believed. The child continued crying and pivoted toward a parked car. He began fingering a door handle, tracing patterns in the dust on the door panels. His Hallowe’en costume had held together well, the Inspector noted. The cloak’s high collar suggested Dracula but perhaps he was mistaking it for Superman or Batman. Would this stubborn child insist on wearing his hero’s clothes night and day until they fell off in flitters?
“I’ll layve you here in the street, so I will, if and you don’t come on!” the mother shouted. She had rested one hand on her hip, the other laying the handle of the pram.
“All right, then! Bye-bye.” The child wailed and sat down heavily.
“I’m going!” said the mother. She turned and pushed the pram.
Minogue watched her staged resolution and he wondered how far she’d walk before she turned for another ultimatum. Some vague feeling rustled in his chest. The child howled wait, mommy, wait. The mother walked by the Fiat and glanced in at the two detectives. Reflected sun from a window was on her face as she turned. The glare caught every line, the cast of her mouth, her eyelashes. Wait, mommy, wait, cried the child, but he stayed on the footpath.
“I’ll do no waiting! Get up off the ground this instant and hurry on with you, you bold boy!”
The threat of abandonment worked. The child tried to swallow his cries and rose to his feet. Boys, thought Minogue, and remembered Daithi’s infant temper-a lot more work than girls. Little pleased with her victory, the mother had more conditions.
“And no more whinging out of you!” she warned.
“I’d say she’s something, that one,” murmured Hoey.
“With the pram?”
“No. Sheila Howard.”
The surprise worked its way down to his stomach. Hoey’s mind was off on its own course. He was giving his colleague and nominal boss a cool survey. Minogue started the car hastily enough to grind the starter motor. He gritted his teeth, tightened his seatbelt and busied himself lickering with the controls for the choke and then the heater. Up the Listowel Road and on to Tarbert and the ferry to Clare; meet with Crossan, see if he had anything new; try not to take a swipe at him. Try not to have a row with Hoey en route either. He took a deep breath and released it. Hoey was still eyeing him when he turned to check for traffic. The Inspector trod heavily on the brake pedal.
“What the hell are you looking at?” he growled at Hoey.
Hoey said nothing, but he kept looking at him. Minogue searched his colleague’s face. Hoey’s expression reminded him of one of those bench-marks of marriage, a high-water mark, when one partner looks at the other in the wake of a thoughtless hurt. He disengaged the clutch.
“What’s up with you, Shea? Quit giving me the treatment.”
“What’s up with you, you mean.”
“This is not a good time to be playing games with me. You’ve got something on your mind? Do you resent being dragged up and down the country, is that it? Well, if that’s the case, all you need do is-”
“What the hell use is it to me to say something to a man with his fingers stuck in his ears?”
Minogue understood that something had lurched out into his path like an inescapable drunkard weaving toward him on the footpath, mirroring his efforts to sidestep him. He had defended the Howards to Crossan, a man who knew them far better than he, Minogue, did. Now he was annoyed that he had to defend them again to Hoey. He, Minogue, had turned away from something, but part of him-that part of him which over the years had become his real intelligence-had been trying to make itself known to him.
“It was just you and Crossan the other night. Going to see her,” Hoey said. “I wondered why you didn’t ask