“Give me an hour, hour and a half. I’ll pick you up in front of here.”
Hoey nodded. He let a mouthful of air balloon his lips before he let it out with a soft pop. “You’re clear on what you want from her, right?”
“How many more times are you going to ask me?”
Hoey pursed his lips and nodded again, as if he were resigned to the score now that he had heard the final whistle.
“So I’ll meet you here outside the gate about eleven. Did you check to see if she’s in the house?”
“The phone’s still out from last night.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Minogue drove slowly. The fog seemed thicker outside town. Trees and houses materialised and then slipped back into the whiteness as he passed them. Fields were swallowed up a hundred feet beyond the roadside walls.
He could not see the Howards’ house from the gate. He stuffed the Fiat into a spot by the gates and turned off the engine. He was standing outside before he wondered what the hell he was parking there for. He shook his head at his own confusion. Was it a subconscious thing, not wishing to bring the poor Fiat back to the scene of its despoiling in front of the Howards’ house? Embarrassment at driving this wreck, full of uxorious litter? He unlocked the door and prepared to get in but then decided to leave the damn car where it was. Perhaps, he reflected as he locked the door again, it was vestigial caution after seeing the police cars and vans swarming around the gates the other night, wisely left outside until the Fiat had been probed for booby-traps. A walk up the avenue would give him another chance to clear his head anyway. He looked into the window of the Fiat, ran his comb over the top of his head and set off up the avenue.
The trees and bushes seemed to move as they came to him from the fog. The house appeared first as a darker patch, grey, then as the outlines of roof and corner. A Hiace van was parked by the steps.
C. Loughnane
Home Repairs, Restoration and Renovations
We’re Not Happy Until You Are.
He walked past the van. He saw no workmen about but a stepladder was next to the window. Minogue stood and studied the damaged plaster around the window opening. The frame was still attached and there were shards of glass in the flower bed below the window. He remembered the whacks as bullets hit the wall. He looked closer and detected the deeper points to the centres of the scooped-out gouges in the plaster. A breeze caught his coat and moved it across his legs. He shivered. Did Sheila Howard have her own car? The damp air seemed luminous now. Minogue’s eyes ached when he looked up at the sky. What approach would he use? Mrs Howard, I was just mulling over our chat and…
The steps seemed steeper. He grasped the brass doorknocker but the door moved slightly. He let down the knocker and pushed at the door with his fingertips. On the latch to let the workmen come and go? Maybe she had done what she had to do with the bloody horses, or whatever she had stayed for, and she was on the high road to Dublin already. Iijit. He saw his own bulbous face reflected onion-like on the doorknocker as he took his hand away. Better knock. He passed a hand over his hair. Something suggested to him that knocking or calling out here was vulgar, disturbing. He went for the knocker again and he heard a short cry from inside the house. His hand stopped inches from the knocker but his other hand pushed the door a few inches back into the hall. A radio announcer issued news indistinctly from somewhere in the house. An ad jingle started up.
“Go on,” he heard a man’s voice say. Taunting, urgent, whisper and hiss together. The Inspector put one foot on the threshold.
“Do it, can’t you?” said the man. “Like we do. Come on!”
“Leave me be,” Sheila Howard said. “I don’t want that. Not today.”
“Ah, Jesus, don’t be worrying!” The man’s voice rose. “You like it,” said the man, less pleading now. “Don’t play Lady Muck on me! I know how you like it. Tell me now. Go on, tell me!”
Minogue’s feet were leading him across the hall. His mind had gone away. The radio ad ended and a bubbly host announced a top hit from the charts while the music started up. The man’s voice had a warning tone to it now.
“Are you too good for me today, is it?”
Her voice strained and wavered as though she were exerting herself in some chore. “Not now,” she said. “Not here. I can’t.”
“Prince Charming ran away, so what are you fluttering on about?” He sounded breathless now. The words slowed as though he was concentrating on something else.
“He’s having his ride up there. It’s your turn. Come on.”
“Stop it Ciaran! Take the stuff and go. We’ll meet later on.”
“Give me a little souvenir, can’t you?” His voice fell to a low growl: Minogue heard a grunt.
“No,” she said.
Minogue’s stomach was tight now and his shoulders felt as though they were sinking down along his sides. He knew something, and he was losing a battle that he didn’t remember starting to fight. Better say something, he thought, but his hand pushed at the door anyway. The opening door fanned the scents to him and he knew he needn’t fight any longer. Along with those of sweat and the secret, scented clefts, he made out the musky smell. She saw him in the doorway but the man astride her kept pushing his hips into her. She stared at Minogue without fear or surprise. The Inspector himself felt no shock. Although he could not take his eyes from hers, he saw and understood all he needed to. Her blouse open, naked from the waist down with one of her legs lying on the arm of the sofa. Her jeans were on the floor by the coffee table and black knickers lay next to them. The man’s pants still clung to his ankles. He pushed faster, gasping, and began to mutter. Her eyes were flat and dull but they stayed on the Inspector. She began to move under her partner’s thrusts. Doesn’t she care at all, Minogue wondered? The man’s buttocks squeezed as he pushed hard into her.
“Now,” he hissed. “Tell me. You bitch! You fucking bitch!”
He grasped her neck and rose up over her. Her legs moved limply with every thrust he made. They were tanned, Minogue saw. Her eyes grew larger and turned to her partner. One side of her blouse fell away. Her breast shook as he began to buck.
“Tell me now,” he groaned, and looked down toward her belly. “Tell me, fuck you!”
Her eyes darted from her partner back to Minogue. The man’s head turned suddenly. A concentrated, brutal rapture contorted his face. His face was red. He kept his hands on her neck. Dark hair, strands of it hanging over his eyes. Hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. Late twenties. Ciaran. Minogue remembered the face: one of the two men who had lurched into the pub that night he and Crossan were trying to steady their nerves after the shooting.
Embarrassment won out over his curiosity and Minogue stepped back. The ugliness of what the man’s hands were about stopped his retreat and he stared into the eyes again. The man frowned and began to let himself down. Minogue couldn’t take his eyes from her now. With her partner reaching for his pants, she drew her legs together and tugged at her blouse. Her face was flushed and, while her eyes seemed bright, they retained the dull stare. Like a painting he half remembered, Minogue took in Sheila Howard’s body as she rested on one elbow, her brown legs one over the other.
The words of the tune on the radio, a familiar ballad, kept coming into his thoughts. Without taking his eyes from hers, Minogue could make out the patch of dark hair that stopped half-way to her navel. Some distant disappointment in her look began to work on the Inspector and he began to feel the dismay and desire flood into him. Her body seemed carelessly thrown there, as if it were something she had little use for anymore. But that couldn’t be, he realised. Her body did not fit with this man’s lust. A slob: how could she? No coy or whorish scorn in her expression. Unconcerned, as if all had been lost some time ago and there was no place to begin trying to explain. How could she? How could anyone, you gobshite? You know people and what they can do. Are you blind or just stupid? Romance. Do you think people are angels? Wishing your life away. Don’t you know anything?
The Inspector’s words came out in a whisper. “I’ll wait.”
The radio went to ads again. Sheila Howard’s partner had now turned his back. He was working his trousers
