“I think we need to talk to her first.” Minogue realised that his words had betrayed something. “I mean that I need to assess how, er, Eilo McInerny’s allegations may affect the situation and so on.”
“Aha,” Crossan barked. “Allegations. We have allegators now, do we? Maybe we’re getting somewhere now.”
Trapped, Minogue floundered further. He heard his words sound an ignominious retreat into the formal, public language of a policeman. He did not look at Hoey as he spoke.
“I don’t need to remind you that this is a delicate matter. We’re obliged to respect the parties’ rights. Things must remain as allegations-”
“Naughton blew his brains out,” said Crossan.
“-while we sift through what’s to be had in the line of information-”
“Are you or aren’t you going to press for a full investigation when you confer with your, em, colleagues?”
Minogue took a few seconds to absorb Crossan’s sarcasm.
“I give my word that I-we’ll-keep you as fully informed as we possibly can.”
He waited for another dig from the lawyer but none came. Crossan’s gaze lingered on him, but then he swept it away. The waitress timed a visit to coincide with the truce.
“No, thanks,” Minogue said, and held his hand over the glass. “Put it all on the one bill, if you please.”
“I can’t be bought off,” said Crossan. His voice had lost its edge, the Inspector noted. “But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t try again with other blandishments.”
Minogue decided it was time for a Parthian shot.
“You can return the favour if you carry an election sometime in the future, counsellor. Only as long as it’s won fair and square.”
“Oh, the sting off that,” said Crossan, regaining some vigour. “Dublin hasn’t softened your tongue as regards digs.”
The drowsiness was heavy across Minogue’s chest now, cocooning and holding him fast in the chair in Ennis, County Clare. The curtains were drawn in the dining-room. Half-seven. Should he have tried to drive back to Dublin instead of sitting to a dinner with Crossan? All the lawyer had done was to grill him about why he wasn’t doing what Crossan himself thought needed done. Even Hoey was looking askance at his judgement. If he closed his eyes, he’d nod off, he believed.
“You’ll be in touch,” said the lawyer.
The smell of a fry woke Minogue. His whole body ached. He felt as if he were anchored to the bed, like Gulliver pinned. Is this what a stroke does, he wondered, and thought of Tidy Howard. The mattress was too soft, and he had rolled into a hollow where he had been boiled by a heavy eiderdown into a state of sweaty, aching immobility. Ten to nine, he saw on his watch. And he had worried that he was too wound up to sleep.
He struggled to sit up in bed. A fragment of a dream slid by him before he could see it clearly: a fire, he knew, but… He rubbed at his eyes for a full minute. Then he picked up his watch again and strapped it on. He had slept for eleven hours. He remembered that Mrs McNamara had kept him talking through the news when Hoey and he had come in last night. He had phoned Kathleen, he recalled, and had done a good job of editing out the greater part of the day’s proceedings.
He drew the curtains back a little. For a moment he wondered if he were still asleep and dreaming. As his eyes became used to the light he could make out the looming forms in the fog beyond Mrs McNamara’s tidy, wet garden. He dressed and packed his bag. At least he’d get to steal into Bewleys in Dublin today. He knocked on Hoey’s door but there was no answer. He opened the door to find Hoey’s bed made. His toothbrush, several packets of Majors and pieces of folded paper were on a dressing table. One of them was an airmail envelope with jagged paper by the opened flap. He closed the door and headed for the parlour. Mrs McNamara’s head inclined out the kitchen door to intercept him.
“Come in,” she called out. “I thought I heard someone stirring.”
“Hello, missus. Is there any sign of the other lad?”
“Oh, Seamus?” she beamed. Mrs McNamara was holding a spatula aslant across her chest. “He’s gone out, so he is.”
Minogue followed her into the kitchen. A stirring in a chair by the Aga drew his eyes to an elfin figure sitting next to the range. The old woman looked out over her hands, which rested on the handle of a blackthorn walking- stick, and issued a myopic smile. Were there more dwarfs hiding about the house? He turned to greet the old woman.
“Good day to you, ma’am.”
“And yourself, now,” she croaked back.
The Inspector turned back to Mrs Mac.
“Excuse me now, but did he say where he was going?”
“He went out to get sausages. Such a memory I have, I didn’t have a sausage in the house and he offered to go out.”
Maybe gone AWOL to get a bloody half-bottle of whiskey or something. He turned to head back to the hallway.
“Ah, sit down, can’t you? He’ll be back in a minute.” Mrs McNamara’s voice began to go up. “Sure he’s only gone a few minutes.” She pushed Minogue toward the old woman. Maybe he’d pushed Hoey too hard or something?
“Mrs Moran here comes by of a morning,” Mrs McNamara went on in a louder voice. “Don’t you, Mamie? And we have a cup of tea and a chat so as we catch up on the news about town.”
The seated elf must be in the high eighties, Minogue decided.
“Don’t trouble yourself to get up, now,” he muttered. He leaned down to grasp her bony fingers. Her skin reminded him of boiled chicken skin slipping over the bone.
“If and I don’t give it a try,” she answered back with a shrill, mewing voice, “I mightn’t be able to get up when I’d be needing to.”
Her denture slipped as she smiled up at the policeman. Minogue readied himself to catch her.
“Matt Minogue, missus. How do you do?”
His hands had ideas of their own. They stayed up, waiting for her to totter. She did not. She sat back with a sigh and the blackthorn wavered in front of her again.
“Yerra, there’s no good in grousing,” she shouted at Minogue. “And that’s a fact.”
Now Minogue knew why Hoey had gone on an errand so readily. Mrs McNamara shouted and waved the spatula at the window.
“Please God, we’ll get a bit of sun before dinner-time, Mamie.”
“Please God,” echoed Mrs Moran, and she shuddered. She clasped her blackthorn and, to Minogue’s consternation, licked the tip of her nose. How long a tongue did the woman have? Mrs McNamara turned from the cooker.
“Matt is a Guard, Mamie,” she roared. “He’s here on a holiday. Lot of excitement in town,” Mrs McNamara went on. “You heard someone took potshots at the Howards’ house, Mamie?”
Mrs McNamara swivelled around with her eyes wide and gave the Inspector a conspiratorial smile.
“Merciful hour,” said Mrs Moran. “Imagine that!”
She gave several spasms which Minogue suspected were poorly governed shrugs and her dentures came into play again.
“The times that we’re living in. ’Tis like The Troubles again.”
“If I might use the telephone?” asked Minogue.
“Oh, fire away, can’t you?” Mrs McNamara shouted over the spitting rashers. “But ye’ll not leave here without a proper breakfast.”
Minogue backed away toward the door.
“Very good of you.”
He phoned the Squad office number and waited. Murtagh answered with a fluid delivery of the “Investigation-Section-may-I-help-you” which Kilmartin had directed the people-friendly detectives to answer inquiries with. Partnership, PR, the Human Face were some of the terms Kilmartin had relayed back from meetings
