name. A pony-tail on the other one.”
“Did they say they were from the Egans?”
“No. But I knew. I’d seen them years ago. They’d grown up together. Around the corner from where we- where I lived. When we were together.”
“You didn’t report it.”
Mullen’s forehead lifted.
“This is the real world. Who am I going to report to? Lodge a complaint with the Guards? No way. I knew enough about them over the years. You’d hear people talking about the Egans. The fellas who did the work for them. They can do pretty well what they please.”
“They told you to…?”
“Keep me nose out of Mary’s business. To stop pestering her.”
“In so many words?”
“How do you mean?”
“They used those words?”
“No. They used, well, you know yourself.”
“Nothing physical.”
“No. ‘Mary doesn’t want you hassling her.’ ‘You can’t drive with broken legs.’”
Minogue looked at his watch. Nearly three. The heat was putting him to sleep.
“I know I’m under suspicion, you know. And I don’t blame you.”
“I’m not persecuting you for your beliefs, Mr. Mullen.” Yet.
“You’ll probably try anything to make me say I killed my own daughter. Right? You took my car away and I can’t work. I just sit at the table and think about everything. And pray. I thought about drinking more times today and yesterday than I thought about it for weeks, probably. You think that’s easy? You-well, the other fellas earlier really-run down my beliefs. Call me names, right? Wife-beater. How am I going to persuade you that I’m innocent?”
“You’re not going to persuade us. We’re going to decide that for ourselves.”
“But haven’t I got the sheet of me fares for the night, addresses even?”
“It’s incomplete, Mr. Mullen. You know better than I do about switching off a meter.”
“So if I can’t account for ten seconds that night, then I’m still on a list or something?”
Minogue hauled his legs in under him. He put his watch back on.
“We’ll be talking to you again, Mr. Mullen. Look, I hope you last it out with the drink thing. Get together with someone, can’t you? Your, what do you call ’ems, mentors?”
Mullen rose to his feet.
“Look, let me just tell you one last thing. I don’t like this way you treat me. But I accept it because I’m depending on you to find whoever did this. Being treated like I am is a part of my penance for the past, isn’t it? You see, I’m not one of those people that thinks anything goes. Right? Even in the Church, you get a lot of do-it-if-it- suits-you kind of morals. I lost my daughter to that world out there. That’s my hell. And you are part of that hell because you don’t understand.”
Minogue nodded at Malone. Mullen looked out the doorway and then turned to the Inspector. The words came out in a monotone.
“Nothing just happens, you know,” he said. “There’s a reason for everything.”
“Jesus,” said Malone.
“Not quite, Tommy. Just one of His more vocal supporters.”
Malone looked over.
“Okay. A looper, then.”
“Well. Did you take all that in?”
“Haven’t met many of him, I can tell you that.”
“Do you believe him?”
Malone gnawed the inside of his cheek while he piloted the Nissan through traffic. Minogue wondered what shape Patricia Fahy would be in for the hard questions.
“Don’t know yet. Fella I knew went religious after a car accident. Oh, yeah. Before the crash it was ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck that.’ Then I’d bump into him and him hobbling around on crutches. ‘God bless,’ ‘salvation,’ ‘love’ was all I got out of him then. Told me he woke up in the hospital and God was floating on the ceiling. What about the fifteen pints, I said. Ha, ha, like. No. Not funny.”
“Why?”
“Preferred the old way. You knew where you stood. Must have got brain damage, like.”
Minogue shifted in his seat. The small of his back prickled with heat. Tiny pieces of grit seemed to be stinging his eyes at regular intervals. The traffic was at a standstill for three minutes now.
A short fat man in a fluorescent vest waved a reversing lorry out ahead of them. Minogue studied the nearly completed block and counted eight stories. The sea-green glass reflected the sky as grey. A crane was lifting more windows up the outside of the building. The load turned slowly as it rose and the sun caught the glass.
“Jases,” said Malone and raised his hand over his eyes. He inched the Nissan around a forklift and turned into East Wall proper.
“Those windows’ll be a right target for young lads around here. Boom.”
Minogue grinned. This area east of the city centre and north of the Liffey had been the toughest beat for a century. The adjoining docklands were being redeveloped as Ireland’s new international financial centre. The glass-clad buildings which had recently sprung up there were epic exercises in New Brutalist style, so far as Minogue could make out. Hope springs infernal.
“A bit hard on the Dublin crowd, there, aren’t you, Tommy?”
Malone stood on the brakes as a motorcycle shot through a gap in traffic ahead.
“Ya fucking bollicks!”
Minogue caught a glimpse of the driver. A helmet covered in front by dark plastic, a radio strapped next to his chin.
‘“Scuse the language there, er… Those fu- those couriers. I must be a bit edgy.”
“Don’t be worrying. This is your first case.”
“Ah, that’s not what has me so jumpy-Whoa. Number 27. Here we are.”
Malone pulled in abruptly, switched off the engine and rolled up the window.
“What has you so jumpy?” Minogue asked.
“The brother.”
“You expect Patricia Fahy to give you more slagging about him?”
“Yeah. And I’ll probably get no end of slagging when you-know-who finds out.”
“Jimmy Kilmartin? Sure he knows about it already.”
“Yeah, I know that. It’s a new page in the story though.”
Malone’s voice had fallen to a murmur. He rubbed his forehead hard with his thumb.
“Terry’s time is up. He’s getting paroled. Yeah. Terry hits the streets tomorrow.”
SIX
He slipped off the bus, and lit his second-last cigarette. He watched the bus turn out of sight down the road. He’d have a bit of something to eat, have a wash-up and head back into town. He’d try the pubs along Leeson Street. Dwyers, O’Brien’s, that Unicorn kip. She might have gone to that club, Stella’s. Wash his hair and put on something sharp so’s he wouldn’t have the bouncer at Stella’s looking down his nose at him. But if he had to go to Stella’s to look for her, that’d mean money. A fiver cover charge! And she might be sitting with one of the Egans. Christ! He looked up and down the street. She’d throw a bleeding fit if she thought he’d come looking for a freebie.
He drew hard on the cigarette. The steady pulses over his eyebrows were getting stronger. There was a
