“All this,” said Byrne. “All this stuff. The fancy new offices and apartments and everything. It all goes fast and looks shiny, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you this. I see through all this. All this rubbitch. Look close up and what’ll you see? Fellas with telephones stuffed into their ear and they whizzing along. Women with their skirts up to here. Don’t they cop on to the fact they’re asking for it if they dress like that? Asking for it, they are.”
“Mr. Byrne. I need some way to get in touch with you again.”
“Wait a minute there, chief. What do I know?” Minogue took a breath and held back his irritation.
“Just in case, Mr. Byrne.” He looked into Joey Byrne’s eyes. “Guards can’t get anywhere without the help of the responsible citizens, can they now?”
Byrne frowned and looked away.
“Do you have a phone number, Mr. Byrne?”
“Tell us again, Mr. Mullen,” said Minogue. “What she said to you that time.”
The chair creaked as Jack Mullen sat back. What was he like when he lost his temper, the Inspector kept wondering.
“Again?”
Minogue nodded once.
“Again.”
Mullen scratched at his scalp. Aside from the fact that he sweated like a sumo wrestler and that he had ears like the FA Cup, Jack Mullen looked healthy. Three times a week he worked out. Part of the recovery process, he had said. Like hounding his daughter, Minogue wondered.
Mullen let his gaze rest on the dusty windowpanes which looked out over a cut-stone wall topped by shards of glass next to Pearse Street Garda Station.
“You see, if you’re going to change your life, you can’t leave anything out-”
“Start from when you saw her.”
Jack Mullen looked away from the window toward Minogue but his eyes did not stop on him. They travelled on around the walls, over the discoloured ceiling and to the floor. Minogue counted himself lucky never to have been posted to Pearse Street Garda Station. He had used this room a half-dozen times before. Here he had watched Kilmartin demolish suspects, gut their alibis and their beliefs that they could leave here without telling him the truth. He had seen Kilmartin throw a suspect in a shooting incident across this room. The smells of polish and paint, of long-gone sandwiches and cigarettes, along with the smells of sweat and desperation soaked into the walls over decades were being drawn out by the heat.
“But that’s only a small part of it. You don’t understand.”
“This was in March, you said. You were driving up by Baggot Street. How long had you been looking for Mary?”
“Look. How many times is this? I’m willing to put up with this, this abuse from yous. And a lot more if need be.”
Have a gander at the medical records of Mullen’s injury, Minogue decided.
“I can take punishment. Even if it’s unfair.”
“Punishment for what, Mr. Mullen?”
Mullen sighed again.
“You know. You’re slagging religion. I know. You don’t understand the recovery process. People pretend they can run away from themselves, don’t they?”
Minogue shrugged.
“In denial, that’s what it is. And that’s sin. It’s turning away, isn’t it? Not facing up to yourself. Or God. It’s only when your eyes are opened to what you’ve done wrong… You have to make amends. You have to come home. God doesn’t just pull a miracle out of his pocket, does He? He says, ‘Here, this is the way. It’s up to you.’ He empowers you, like.”
Empower, thought Minogue. Relationship. Process. Development. Some days it took almost too much work not to be cynical. He breathed in slow and deep.
“Mr. Mullen. You tried to persuade Mary to come home. To your home? Your wife’s?”
“Home to God, that home. Back to God in her heart. That’s the first thing.”
“She rejected your invitation, you said. In what manner?”
“There you go again. You’ll probably agree with everything Irene says then.”
“About what?”
“What she told you already about me. You know what I’m talking about. The marriage breaking down. The lies about Mary and-”
“Ah, come on now. You clattered your wife. She says you clattered your daughter. You at least threatened to clatter your daughter. You told us that yourself.”
“Yes, I clattered her, as you say. My wife, Irene, was with another fella when I was away working in England. I’m not saying it was right though, did I?”
Minogue said nothing.
“Deep in my heart-even then, when I was a slave to the drink-I knew she’d gone into a life of sin. Deep down, people know what’s stopping them being healthy. Everyone has an instinct for good. Everyone wants to heal themselves and become whole again. Sin is a wound, like. To others too, of course.”
Minogue pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You can shake your head and everything,” Mullen murmured. “I know.”
Minogue opened his eyes again.
“What do you know?”
“I know the kind of mind you have as regards religion. I can tell.”
“It’s the heat, Mr. Mullen. Go back to the actual meeting now. You were driving along Baggot Street. You saw her. She was on her own. Now-go ahead.”
Minogue listened. He could detect no inconsistencies this time either. Mullen had finished speaking for several seconds before Minogue looked up from his fingers.
“Since then, Mr. Mullen?”
“Nothing. Like I said. I knew nothing.”
“You thought about her a lot?”
“What father wouldn’t worry about his daughter?”
Minogue met his eyes. Mullen raised his hands and let them drop in his lap.
“But you didn’t try to find her?”
“What could I do? I knew she was in bad company. I prayed. The thing that you forget when you see that your life is out of control is that God gives you choices. But at the time, well, I was lost. Just lost.”
But now I’m found, Minogue almost said aloud. He wondered how Hoey was doing in London.
“But now I… know there is a path. The drink thing, the alcohol thing, is what you’re trying to win over on its own, of course. But that’s not the victory you’re really looking for, is it? I mean, when you finally get up off your knees and you get out of the bottle, where do you go? Where’s home then, if you don’t have the bottle to live in- that’s the question.”
Minogue imagined Hoey motoring around some postcard English dales. Would the heat wave there drive him to sample the local beer maybe?
“It’s ourselves, isn’t it, our natures. It’s sin. Sin is the proof that we’re free. I mean to say, God doesn’t waltz in and pick up the bits, does He?”
He’s asking me, thought Minogue.
“Mary was free, so she was. She turned away. She lived in sin. I knew she had to fight her own battle herself. I knew that in my head. But I wanted to help. I’m her father. I… I loved her. ”
Minogue picked up his biro and drew another box on the paper.
“How long after that when you got the warning, Mr. Mullen?”
Inside the box he drew a circle. Mullen folded his arms and followed Minogue’s progress.
“Couple of days.”
“Two fellas?”
“Yes. Two fellas. I recognized one of them from a long way back. He was local to us. I couldn’t remember his
