“Lie down.”
The pain was now like a weight on his neck and shoulders. Sheila Howard had settled back against the wheel-well but she was looking out the back window of the van. Ciaran still had his arm over the seat.
“Who else from your mob are here in Ennis?” Ciaran asked.
Minogue focussed on him with difficulty. He began to say something but nothing came out. He tried to swallow.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he managed to croak. Ciaran’s eyes narrowed.
“Your mob,” he said, louder. “Your pals. Guards. Whatever outfit you belong to. Undercover mob.”
Minogue wondered if he dared lift his arm to look at his watch. What would Hoey think when he didn’t show?
“Are you deaf?” shouted the driver. That one, Minogue thought, as he heard the tone of a braggart keen to look tough, the one who had been drinking in the kitchen while his pal and Sheila Howard were…
“I don’t have a mob. I’m down on a holiday.”
“Liar,” said the driver. “This is your second trip. And you have another fella with you. The one with the black eyes.”
“What were you snooping around for?” Ciaran resumed. “What are you looking for?”
Minogue said nothing. The pain dulled his vision but he stared at Sheila Howard. He thought of her straddled on the sofa, this Ciaran rising and falling over her.
“You’re an undercover type,” said Ciaran. “Who’s your boss?”
“I’m me own boss.”
Ciaran sprang up, his knees on the seat, and let his arms down over the back of the seat. Minogue looked over at him. The pistol dangled from his hand but the Inspector saw the finger on the guard.
“Don’t play the fucking smart-arse with me,” Ciaran growled and waved the gun. “Who sent you? What do you know about us?”
Us, Minogue thought. He tried to calculate what he should say.
“He’s down from Dublin-” Sheila Howard said.
“Jesus, we know that.” Ciaran waved the gun again. “The Murder Squad. That’s a cover for something. What’re you really here for?”
These two had strolled into Considine’s pub after he and Crossan had been there ten minutes. Did Crossan…? Minogue’s thoughts were snapped away by fear then. For several moments his body merely registered the squeaks and the tyres’ whirr as the van travelled over the Burren road. Across his fogged mind images flared and disappeared back into his confusion: Had Crossan known?
“Ah, to hell with it,” said Ciaran. The van jiggled on a series of bumps. Ciaran pressed the pistol against the seat-back to steady himself.
“Look. It’s in your own interest…” He stopped, still searching for something in Minogue’s eyes.
“Fuck it,” he snapped. His face seemed to close up. “It’s your own look-out if you want to be an iijit.”
Minogue watched as Ciaran’s eyes went to Sheila Howard. She looked back at him and then returned to the window, her head and upper body swaying as the van took the turns. Minogue believed Ciaran had wanted some sign from her. He moved one hand down the wrist of the other. His watch was gone. Its loss shocked him and surprised him, bringing back the fear. There was something expert about taking his watch, he thought. Planning. He thought of making a break for the door and tumbling out onto the road, hoping for the best. Sit up a little and wait until they passed a house so that Ciaran would hesitate to use a gun. Forget the fact that houses were few and far between here. Minogue moved an elbow under himself and prepared to push his body up in stages. Just then the van slowed and left the tarred road. It wallowed bumpily and slowed as the driver eased it up a laneway. Bushes scraped along the panels once. The van turned sharply and stopped.
“Stay down on the floor,” said Ciaran. The driver switched off the engine. Minogue’s confusion was burned away. Terror took its place. The insistent knowledge came back still stronger. Knowing what he knew, they would not let him go.
Hoey closed the newspaper and looked at the man behind the counter of Hogan’s newsagents. Should he tell him? He felt like laughing, it was so bloody ridiculous. Wait until he showed it to Minogue. He looked at his watch. A half an hour yet.
“That’s a wicked fog. You wouldn’t want to be out on the roads this morning, by God.”
He had gone to see Out of Africa with Aine and found the landscape behind Meryl Streep’s and Robert Redford’s faces contrary to what he had imagined Africa was like. Did you think it was all monkeys swinging, like in the zoo, she had gibed. Children with swollen bellies swaying in front of the camera, he had thought. People always unfortunate, winds whipping sandstorms over what had been grass, gaunt scarecrows carrying stick-limbed babies in the heat and dust. But that wasn’t a true picture, Aine had told him. You mean millions are not dying? No: the culture, the ruin that white people had brought to Africa. Slavery, colonialism, apartheid. Didn’t he know that our ancestor was probably an African, Eve?
“But sure, it’ll probably clear off when we get a breeze.”
Aine had gotten her last inoculation that afternoon, he remembered. She had showed him the needle mark: the cholera can be bad, she had said. There had better not be any Robert Redford types hanging around out there now, with or without the clap. The images from the picture receded as the memory of their row that same evening came to him. He felt a leakage of something cold into his chest and stomach. He didn’t want to think about it but he couldn’t help it.
If you’d only wait and give me time, I could get a leave and go with you. You’re joking me, you haven’t even been out of Ireland on a holiday, Shea. And, anyway, what could you do out there? You’re a Guard. They want teachers and what-have-you, not more men in uniform. I could visit. I’ll write and let you know, Shea. Maybe I need to be on my own for a while, a change of scene. For what? That’s none of your business in actual fact. I need to stretch me legs and do new things. There’s more to me than being a teacher, you know. There’s more to me than being a cop, too. You’ve changed, Shea. You really have. Over the last two or three years. I haven’t changed enough for you, by the sound of things. Don’t get like that, you’re like a spoiled child. I’m the way I am, I’ve always been different and you knew that. You never complained about that before. You used to say you liked that even. Look, Shea, let’s not fight. We’re two grown people. Things change, that’s all I’m saying.
Hoey opened the paper again. It was still there.
“Are you down from Dublin?”
Hoey was reading today’s copy of the Irish Independent. On page four, the features page, was a full-page article on Irish people working for charity organisations in Africa. Aine, her arms around two black kids smiling shyly, was herself grinning back into the camera. “Aine Healey, a teacher on leave from her job in Dublin, has made fast friends with these two youngsters in rural Zimbabwe.”
Hoey looked up from the paper. “How much is the Indo?”
Mr Hogan looked over the rim of his glasses at Hoey.
“Same price as in Dublin. Have you it all read?”
“It was the one page I was looking over again,” said Hoey. He laid a pound coin next to Hogan’s cup of tea. “See her? I know her.”
Hogan squinted at the picture. “Africa, begob. She’s helping them out in Africa. That’s great.” He looked up to Hoey and smiled.
“That’s the Irish for you. Where there’s trouble and famine, that’s where we go. We had it so bad ourselves with the Great Hunger, we’d never walk away from people in need. It’s in the genes, man. It’s the way we are- that’s what I say.”
Hoey took his change and stumbled back out into the shrouded town of Ennis. He stopped in a doorway and read it again. “They need us and they’re terrific kids. They really want to be in school… Yes, it took time to adjust but I fell in love with the people. They really need us… They have taught me so much… Oh, sure, I miss Ireland but not as much as I…”
Hoey’s eyes began to sting. He stuffed the paper under his arm and searched his pocket for hankies. His chest began to heave and he couldn’t stop it. He had no hankies but he wouldn’t go back into the shop in this state. Were the pubs open? Fuck! His shoulder scraped the wall as he fingered his eyes. He began to look at the shop- fronts, hoping to see a pub. He stepped out into the street to see better. The car grew out of the fog behind him.
