the odd time after that. Then about a year and a half back I bumped into her in a pub.”
“What pub?”
She curled her lip.
“I don’t remember. What do you think I am, a computer?”
“You went into a flat with her,” Minogue said.
“So? She didn’t tell me her life story.”
“You knew she worked the trade though,” said Malone. “How?”
“I found out one night, didn’t I. Met someone. We were talking about people we knew. The usual chatting. I mention Mary and he goes, ‘Is she still at it?’ So I ask her later. She got mad at me.”
“What did she say?”
“‘What’s wrong with getting money for it?’ ”
“Freelance, like?” Malone asked.
“I don’t know.”
“With the Egans?”
Minogue didn’t get the outburst he expected. She folded her arms and waved the cigarette around.
“Look. All I know about them is that she knew one of them. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” repeated Malone. “Why should the person who did this get away with it, Patricia? You’re helping them.”
“No, I amn’t.”
“You’re scared,” said Malone. “And it shows. Just like your da.”
“Drop dead. What do you know about anything?”
“Mary was your friend, wasn’t she?” said Minogue. She pushed off suddenly from the counter.
“I told her, and I told her!” she burst out. “She didn’t listen! She wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t what, Patricia?”
“Ah, Christ, I don’t know! That’s the problem! Can’t you get it through your thick skulls? She wouldn’t tell me! She had all these secrets. I warned her.”
“About what?”
She settled back against the counter and looked out the window.
“So Mary was still on the game,” said Malone.
“I don’t know. I suppose she was. Maybe she wasn’t. I don’t know.”
“She had no pimp, you seem to be telling us,” said Minogue. “But you were warning her against something. Was it people you saw back at the flat, people she told you about? People you heard about?”
“She used the flat as a place to hang her clothes,” she said. “So don’t be asking me again where she spent her time. All I know for sure is that Mary did manicures over at Tresses. There were times I wouldn’t see her for days. A week, even. I was getting tired of it, I tell you. I didn’t like being there on me own. That wasn’t the idea, like.”
An image came to Minogue: Patricia Fahy poking around amongst Mary’s stuff.
“Of moving in together, like?”
“Yeah. It worked out okay, splitting the cost and everything. But you’d want company, you know? I went out with me fella just to have company sometimes.”
Malone flipped back a page in his notebook. She glared over at him.
“He’s my alibi. Isn’t that the word? So’s I don’t have to keep on telling yous I didn’t do it?”
Malone looked up from his notebook. She returned his glare with a studied pout.
“Try to think, now, Patricia,” said Minogue. “There must have been people phoning the flat or coming around looking for her. Family, friends-anyone.”
She looked up at the lampshade.
“Look,” she said. “Mary told me that the last people she’d want calling around would be family. She told me she had no brothers or sisters. She said her oul lad was a bastard. She wasn’t keen to talk about her ma. I thought it was kind of, you know, strange, like. But I wasn’t going to be nosy like, was I? She wanted her own life, fair enough, like. That a crime?”
She dabbed her cigarette in the ashtray and then held it under her thumb. Minogue let his cheeks balloon with a held breath. He imagined questions floating around trapped in his mouth. How did she know? What else did she know? What was she leaving out?
“Well, there was one iijit,” she murmured as she released her thumb from the cigarette. “Yeah, now I remember… I mean, I don’t know if he’s…”
“Who?”
“Just a, well, Mary called him a gobshite. I don’t even know his real name. He showed up at the door once. She answered, that’s why I forgot until now. Yeah. Skinny fella. What’s that artist’s name, the famous one, he’s dead? Leo… Really famous, like?”
“Leonardo da Vinci?”
“Yeah.”
“A fella called for Mary,” said Malone. “A fella by the name of Leonardo da Vinci?”
“What are you looking at? I told you I didn’t know his name. Mary said she knew him years ago. He must have found out where she lived. Scruffy-looking type. No wonder she wasn’t keen on hanging around the likes of him.”
“Scruffy-looking,” said Malone. “Skinny fella? What else about him?”
“Average height. Got the feeling off him he thought he was something, but he wasn’t. A gobshite. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was into something, you know.”
“Criminal?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he stay over at the flat?” Malone asked.
“It was Mary answered the door. She was pissed-off he was there. I came back later on and he was gone. So was she.”
“Not what you thought of as her boyfriend then,” said Minogue. She shrugged.
“Said that he was a gobshite, didn’t she?”
The air seemed almost watery now. Minogue moved to the edge of the chair and tested his biro on a page of his notebook.
“To your knowledge, Patricia, did Mary take drugs?”
Instead of the sarcasm he expected, Minogue’s question drew silence. He looked up from the notebook. She was staring at the ashtray and biting her lip.
“Okay, Patricia,” he said. “We’ll finish off here for now. Think back more to this Leonardo da Vinci. When he came to the flat, a bit more on what he looked like?”
She glanced from Minogue to Malone and back, but her eyes were blank.
The air was still full of dust and glare. The sun’s orb seemed to have broadened. The Inspector hoped that somewhere behind this tarnished air there was a more proper blue than Dublin was stuck with today. His aches had localized themselves to his neck and shoulders. Malone’s hair stood out in slick bristles. He finessed his way through the hordes spilling out off the paths by O’Connell Bridge and let the Nissan find its way down the quays toward Kingsbridge.
“I dunno,” he said. “I can’t tell. Is it shock or is she just plain scared shitless?”
“Well, there was no point in trying to come the heavy.”
“I just couldn’t figure out how much she was lying. I mean, I’m not totally down on her, like. The Egans are animals.”
“Being pregnant,” said Minogue.
“What?”
“Being pregnant. That was the fuse lit, I’m thinking.”
Malone looked over.
“Tried to get the father to wear it and he wouldn’t?”
“Maybe, yes.”
“So she laid it on the line for him, he loses the head and clocks her? I wonder how many fellas Mary had on
