Hoey heard the squeak of brakes and looked around. The antennae were still waving as it started up again. Hoey looked down into the car. The face was familiar. Cuddy rolled down the window.
“Howarya, there,” he said. “Minogue’s pal, aren’t you? Wouldn’t mistake you for anyone else with the eyes there.”
Hoey registered the attempt at humour with a nod.
“Are you lost?” Cuddy asked. The squad car began to move off slowly.
“No,” said Hoey. “No, I’m not really.”
“Tell Minogue I was asking for him,” said Cuddy.
“All right, now,” came Ciaran’s voice from the open door. Minogue elbowed up and squinted against the light in the doorway. Though overcast now, the light seemed intense. The fog had retired further. He put up a hand to shield his eyes. Pain swept up to a knot behind his eyes.
“Out you come,” said Ciaran. The doorway framed Ciaran and Sheila Howard. Behind them in the fog loomed scraggy evergreens. Like so many cottages in west Clare, it was secreted in a sheltering grove of trees and bushes. Overgrown grasses lay in dense, saturated clumps by the door. Minogue looked from the gun to Ciaran’s face.
“Hurry up!”
Minogue stood dizzily on an overgrown laneway. Another surge reached the back of his head and he wondered if he might fall over. Sheila Howard had walked around to the front of the van and she stood there looking away. He took a step forward and felt the world tilting. Builder’s rubble, loose stones and disassembled scaffolding lay in heaps next to the house. Ciaran grabbed Minogue’s collar and pushed him forward. Minogue fought off the urge to turn or run. He hadn’t a clue where they were. He guessed afternoon but he could not make out where the sun was. His eyes hurt. Run for it? He faked a stumble and fell to the ground. Ciaran stood over him, pointing the pistol.
“No funny moves,” he said. He took a step back and motioned Minogue to get up. Minogue’s mind tried to work on his location again: up the Coast Road, near Lisdoon? Above Fanore?
“Get up!”
The driver came around the side of the van, straining with the weight of a box he was carrying. Seeing Minogue half up, he stopped and stared. The box slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the laneway. The driver swore and hopped about, his hands on one knee. Ciaran turned his head.
“Just leave it!” he shouted. “Leave it until we’re ready.” He turned to Minogue who was on one knee now. “And you, get up!”
A new slate roof had been put on the house and an extension had been added to the side. The stone walls had been carefully mortared and fitted to meet with the older building. Ciaran shoved Minogue toward the door.
“In the door there.”
Dread paralysed Minogue. The doorway was a black hole. The horror of being entombed rooted him to the spot. Ciaran grasped his collar again and pushed. Minogue raised his hand to prevent himself from falling. His hand slapped onto the door before he braced himself against the jamb.
“Get in the fucking door,” Ciaran growled, and pushed again. Better to fight, to run. Ciaran jabbed the gun hard under Minogue’s ribs, driving him headlong into the dim interior.
Was it four o’clock? Five? The darkness was unnerving him more and more. The boards covering the small window had been secured with crosspieces jammed and nailed into the old frames. He had heard some kind of cloth being thrown down on the outside of the door. Once he almost cried out, when the image of the house being set on fire wouldn’t go away. He strained for minutes on end to smell any smoke. He had tried to persuade himself-and it had mostly worked-that the cloth was to keep any light from coming in under the door. Still, he could not banish the image which flickered in his mind and detonated the panic in his chest without warning: flames raging through the house, swallowing it, him trapped here as the burning roof came down. Stop imagining. Think. Would Hoey have alerted Kilmartin?
His body seemed to be soaking up cold from the cement floor. He felt it taking over his limbs, working at the flesh around his waist. He had tried to get out to pee but nothing had come of it. Pee in the corner, he had been told through the door. There had been coming and going, he knew, because he had heard the scrape of a piece of wood which had slipped under the front door when he had entered the house. He shivered again and the spasm ran right up to his chin, making his teeth chatter. His nostrils had become inured to the damp odour of the cement and dust. He was not hungry but he wanted something-a cigarette, even. He drew up his knees again. Something about Ciaran especially chilled him. Along with the anger there was some weariness or resignation that showed in his eyes. Did Ciaran believe that he couldn’t let him walk? Ciaran and whatever-his-name-Finbarr. Were they IRA or some splinter group? And how did Sheila Howard get herself mixed up with these two? Her legs, he thought, her empty eyes on his. The same woman he had seen and watched in the dining-room of the Old Ground, in her home. Crossan? Minogue stared into the darkness and whispered the name aloud.
Hoey wheeled around and glared at Crossan. The two men stood at the foot of the steps leading up to the front door of the Howards’. Hoey had been down to Minogue’s car. No keys, locked. No clue as to where Minogue might be. At least there were no bloodstains. He and Crossan had been through the yard, into the coach-house and sheds, out into the fields. Sheila Howard’s car was in the garage. Nothing else. He glared at the lawyer.
“This window,” said Hoey. “Come on, give me a leg up.”
“Aren’t you over-reacting again?”
In lieu of an answer, Hoey sprang up on the lawyer’s cupped hands. Crossan grunted and his shoes sank deeper into the mud as Hoey stood upright. Hoey’s feet moved up to the lawyer’s shoulders.
“‘Guard tramples on well-respected barrister en route to criminal offence,’” Crossan whispered as he grimaced. Hoey tapped in the remaining pieces of glass from the shattered frame.
“Accessories are supposed to help,” said Hoey. “So shut up.”
“Break and enter,” wheezed Crossan beneath him. “I’m a goner now, to be sure.”
Hoey ground his heels into Crossan’s meagre shoulders as he toed up and scrambled in the window. He was satisfied with the grunt of pain the barrister issued. He stood in the room and surveyed the floor by his feet first.
“What’s the story, then?” Crossan called out.
“Wait and I’ll open the front door.”
Hoey headed for the hall and opened the hall door. Crossan trudged up the steps, rubbing at his shoulders. Hoey spotted the phone and lifted it.
“Shite, it’s still not fixed,” he said, and slammed it down.
“At least someone’s made a start on fixing up the place,” said Crossan.
He began using his nails to get mud from his coat. Hoey walked up and down the hall, checking the kitchen and dining-room.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it’d be,” Crossan murmured.
“What isn’t?”
“The damage. The shooting. If you’d been here, you’d have thought the place was coming down around your ears.”
Hoey sprang up the stairs, calling out the Inspector’s name. Crossan heard him opening doors and swearing. Then Hoey came down the stairs fast. He stopped on the last step, frowning at the floor.
“They might have gone somewhere for a chat,” Crossan tried. Hoey snapped his head up and eyed the barrister. Instead of the retort the lawyer expected, Hoey skipped down the steps onto the pebbled driveway and began walking fast down the avenue.
He had been thinking of Eamonn. Black head of hair the day he was born, eyelids tight over his eyes. The small coffin. Beyond knowing that Eamonn had been a baby, he could not remember his son’s face. The three photos they had of him were not clear: one of Kathleen standing by the crib, the baby cradled but his face invisible; Eamonn asleep in the pram in the back garden, long before the shrubs and trees had grown there; Minogue’s mother holding and displaying her grandson to the camera two days before Eamonn had died. Countless times he
