Fahy was up out of the chair fast.
“Like hell you will. You’ve no warrant to be in my house. ”
Malone stood slowly, as did Minogue.
“This ain’t Hollywood, brother,” said Malone. “Get a grip, there.”
Fahy nodded in Minogue’s direction but he kept his eyes on Malone.
“Take Junior for a walk there, Kojak, or he’s going to be part of the scenery. Rapid, like. Cop or no cop.”
“You and whose army,” said Malone.
“I’ll set your head singing before my daughter is-”
The door swung open again. Patricia Fahy looked over her hanky from face to face. Tears had left streaks down to her jaw line.
“God, Da! Go out and get stuff for the tea or something! Jesus! Ma left a list there in the hall.”
“I’m going nowhere until these two get to hell.”
“Well, go in the kitchen or someplace then!” Fahy looked from his daughter to the policemen and back. He shook his head and made for the door. He paused in the doorway and his face darkened again.
“Don’t you try anything,” he growled. Minogue looked at the photos over the table while he waited for Fahy to go. A wedding, a woman who looked like Patricia Fahy. A sunburned couple standing on white sand, an apartment or hotel in the background. Pennants for Spurs and last year’s Irish World Cup team. He heard Fahy swear and then the kitchen door slammed.
“The Egans, Patricia,” he said. She leaned against the cooker and folded her arms.
“What about them?”
“They’re on your da’s mind a lot.”
She narrowed her eyes and dabbed at her nostrils again with the tissue.
“He doesn’t know them,” she said.
“What would they want with you? What did they want with Mary?”
“Who says they want anything with me? Or Mary?”
“Ah, Patricia, come on,” said Minogue. She pivoted and took a packet of cigarettes from the counter. Her hands were steady as she lit one. She took a hurried second drag down deep in her lungs. Her words came out quickly with puffs of smoke.
“Mary was on the game, wasn’t she? Maybe that was it. I don’t know.”
“What about you, Patricia?”
“What about me, what? You’d know if I was. Same way you’d know Mary was, wouldn’t you?”
“We’re not here to make speeches, Patricia,” said Minogue. “We need to know Mary so’s we can find out what happened to her. Don’t you want whoever did this to get caught?”
She frowned behind a ball of smoke.
“I can’t get over it,” she murmured. “Your brother. Jesus! One’s the cop and the other’s the-”
Malone ran his fingers through his hair.
“What’s the use in giving us the run-around,” he said.
“Who pimped for Mary, Patricia?” asked Minogue.
Her mouth stayed open for several seconds. She rolled her eyes and looked away.
“Who broke into your place?” Malone asked.
“You’re asking me? Amn’t I supposed to be asking you that?”
Only her arm moved, Minogue saw, and its arc up to her lips was of such grace and careless accuracy that he could only stare at her. He sat forward and ran his palm across the soft, loose skin on the knuckles of his other hand. Damn, he thought. She thinks she’s a bloody ingenue doing an audition for something. Would she be giving him as much grief if he had taken her down to CDU? He turned his hand over and began rubbing at the palm with his thumb. Tiny flecks of dirt escaped the folds of skin and collected in rolls. He didn’t look up when he spoke to her.
“Listen, Patricia. We’re trying to work from the inside out here. Mary, her friends, what she did, where she liked to go. What she did or didn’t do that might be connected to what has happened. It’s a lot of stuff. Stuff you might know but you mightn’t think is important. Do you know what I’m getting at?”
He glanced over. Her eyes had glazed over. She drew on her cigarette. He thought of giving up then. Here was a woman with no criminal record being a substantial pain in the arse to the Guards.
“People know a lot,” he heard himself say. “They really do. They notice an awful lot, but they need to know something is important before they can drag it out of their memory. You can’t beat it out of people either. Things pop up and you can’t predict them: ‘Yes, she used to do that!’ or ‘Oh, that was the name of the fella she mentioned that night.’ There’s another way that’s less salubrious entirely.”
“Is this the good cop-bad cop bit now?”
Minogue thought of Kilmartin.
“We work from the outside in too, Patricia. It’s like cracking an egg. We go after records, suspects, associates. It’s a bit like crowbarring into somebody’s life, looking all the time for the killer.”
He engaged her look. She blinked once.
“But it gets people’s backs up, Patricia.”
Malone’s mouth twitched and he caught the Inspector’s eye. Minogue rubbed his palm again.
“Cracking the egg often works though,” he went on. “But it takes time. Sometimes the inside of the egg isn’t hardboiled so it gets messy. Sometimes the egg gets ruined. Ends up on the floor.”
“Eggs,” she murmured. “I don’t like eggs.”
“Did Mary seem out of sorts at all the last while?” asked Malone. “Worried, like?”
“I heard her getting sick last week. She said it was the gargle. She’d been out the night before.”
“With who?”
“I dunno.”
Malone’s eyes had narrowed to slits. He was staring at her.
“I fucking don’t!” she cried. “I keep on telling you! ‘Who was her boyfriend?’ ‘Who called to the flat for her?’ ‘Who’d she hang around with?’ ‘Why didn’t she talk to you about her life?’ Jesus!”
“You never knew where she went, what pub or who with?” asked Malone. “Ah, come on now.”
“Ah, come on yourself! Don’t you get it? I don’t fucking know!”
Minogue waited for her to lean back against the counter.
“Okay, Patricia. You saw her last yesterday morning. She was in the kitchen?”
“Just before eight o’clock, yeah. I was up late.”
“And you said she hadn’t been to bed.”
“That’s right. She was just sitting there at the table. Smoking a fag, drinking a cup of tea. Didn’t hear her coming in. She was still dressed from the night before.”
“How’d she look again?”
“Tired, that’s how. Looked like she’d been up all night. Shagged.”
“No remarks about where she’d been, nothing like that?” Malone tried.
“Nothing. Nothing. I knew better than to ask.”
Minogue stretched out his legs.
“Patricia. You’re telling us that Mary kept to herself-”
“You don’t believe me, do you. You’re thinking, ‘Well, the pair of them were into something, so that’s why she won’t tell us anything.’! Aren’t you? Yes, y’are!”
Minogue took in the red-rimmed eyes, the blotchy face. She pursed her lips and lifted her cigarette.
“How long did you share the place with her?”
“A year and a bit.”
“Where did she live before she moved in with you?”
“I don’t know. Some fella maybe.”
“A fella? Did she ever say his name?”
“I don’t know! I’m only guessing, that’s all! Jesus! Do you think I used to come home here and start firing questions at her the minute she walked in the door? Sure, she was hardly home, ever.”
“How long did you know Mary then?”
“Two years, about. I met her doing a thing for manicuring. She was always good for a laugh. Used to see her
