frost on them just after Christmas. Winter meant air thick with the smell of a gas storage heater and the sundry oils and dyes, the wood shavings and stains, the scents of hemp and paper. He had held off opining about the place as a health hazard. Iseult shared the studio with several others. He had been bewildered to find her working with chisels and awls last month, helping one of her fellow tenants to finish a wooden construction which looked, in sketches at least, to be a tank trap from a Normandy beach.
“Well, how are you anyway?” she asked. He forgot the ache in his back, the stale smell of sweat that clung to his shirt. Iseult wasn’t in the habit of calling him at work.
“For my age, do you mean? Or my occupation?”
“In general like.”
“Oh, as ever. Happy-go-lucky. Early dotage maybe…”
“Fibber. Are you working late?”
“It’s hard to know. The usual. Waiting, checking, talking, thinking, cursing…”
“I was just wondering.”
“Well, if I had known you were in the market for tea, now.”
“It’s all right.”
He waited for another hint. Malone waved at him, stepped over to the boards and tapped his marker against a name. Painless Balfe. Minogue put his hand over the mouthpiece.
“We can pin him, Tommy? Right now?”
“Surveillance at Egan’s shop saw him go in five minutes ago. They called it in for us.”
So Kilmartin had bargained something out of Serious Crimes then, Minogue reflected.
“Okay. Pick him up-only when he comes out though.”
“Here, I’ll leave you,” said Iseult. “You’re busy enough.”
The brisk tone made him even more alert.
“Busy? God, no! Where do you want to meet?”
“I don’t want to, you know, get in the way now.”
“Well, I do. What’s that black and silver place in George’s Street? Music from the Andes, the stuff on the walls, avant-garde and what-have-you?”
“‘Back Then’? Are you sure? It’s gone completely vegetarian, you know.”
He rolled his eyes.
“A quarter to six?”
“Done,” he said. “Will you be on your own?”
“To all intents and purposes. I’ll see you, Da.”
The connection was lost before Minogue could utter a word. Was that humour he had heard in her answer? He replaced the receiver and gave a sigh. Phone Kathleen. Tell her that Iseult wanted to see him. Him alone? How would he manage this one, he wondered.
The straps of the plastic bag had cut deep into his fingers again. He stopped to change the bag to his other hand and looked through the grove at the cars passing in the distance. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and lowered the bag to the ground. Did it get cold at night this time of the year, even with a heat wave? If he found some newspapers, that’d help. He sat down and rested against a tree trunk. Something had come between that world of busy commuters and the trees about him. He looked up into the canopy and imagined a tree house there. The chestnut leaves overhead were so dense that he found no bit of sky at all. Like a roof, he thought. Even if it rained, the trees would shelter him.
His hand searched out the bag but it landed amongst pieces of metal. There were beer cans all mangled up under the grass, cigarette butts. He moved over and took out the biscuits and the Coke. They didn’t taste as good as the first time. They had lost that magic which had brought him by the back of his tongue to the age of nine again. He stopped chewing. The bastard could have given him the money, the loan of money, without acting the bleeding Rambo about it. It’d been a long time since Jammy had been that mad at him.
Jammy was scared. Mary. Small pieces of biscuit caught the back of his throat. It began to tighten. His eyes prickled. What a mess, what a fucking mess. The crushed biscuit turned to paste as he cried. He tried to gather it at the front of his mouth to spit it out. Everything was stacked against him no matter what he did. He imagined going into a Garda station and yapping his head off, trying to do a deal to keep him on his own. They’d find out soon enough that he had nothing to do with Mary’s… Mary getting killed. They’d nail the bastard who’d done it. Then he’d be all right.
Even as that hope rose in him, he felt himself falling deeper into something. He swilled Coke around his teeth. Didn’t matter what he’d done or hadn’t done, nobody believed him, not even Jammy. The cops would use him and if he got nailed by any of the Egans, they wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. He squeezed his eyes tight and sucked in air through his teeth. Fucking bastards, the lot of them. Whatever Mary had been into had left the Egans pissed off. Maybe she had told them some yarn about him just to buy time or something and they had done her in then…
He stood and took a few steps into the grove before peeing. The panic came back to him in an instant and it swept all hope away with it. He’d never make it, not tonight out here in the Park, not tomorrow- never! He’d been too cocky about using, even bragging that he could go weeks without a hit. Sure, he had once, but he had been climbing the walls. Junkie; user; scumbag; addict. He still had nearly a hundred and fifty quid. Go down to the Bell and score off Brannigan. Then what? Stay in the pub and blow more money? He could pick out a boozer and knock him outside when he left the pub. He slapped at the tree branch. If only he could talk to one of them, one of the Egans, without any danger he’d get done in, he could explain. He leaned against the tree. Bird-song erupted above. What the hell was he going to do here all night? The foliage seemed to look back at him, to draw him in.
“You fucking iijit,” he heard himself say. What time was it? He wasn’t hungry. Was he going nuts? Here in the middle of Dublin, in the six hundred acres of the Phoenix Park, he’d never felt so lost.
“Well, look at that,” said Painless Balfe. “The Kremlin.”
Malone looked around from the passenger seat. Balfe sat with his hands on his knees between two CDU detectives. The Nissan turned into the car-park of Harcourt Square.
“I’m going to miss you, lads,” he added. He looked from one to the other. “We’ve grown very close.” Malone turned back as the barrier came down behind the car.
“Do I get the chauffeur treatment on the way back too?”
“You lead, will you,” Malone murmured to the driver. “I still don’t know my way around here.”
A Garda in uniform met the car at the entrance to the lift.
“Any word from my solicitor?” said Painless.
“What do you want a solicitor for?” asked Malone. “Are you in trouble?”
Balfe’s expression didn’t change. The Guard held the door open.
“Hey Tommy,” said Balfe.
“Say hello to the brother for me, will you, Tommy? I hear Terry’s taking the air tomorrow.”
Malone watched the doors slide together.
“Maybe I’ll be seeing him before you do, of course,” said Balfe. “By the way, he didn’t mention to you about getting AIDS in the ’Joy, did he? Maybe he wants it to be a surprise.”
“Get yourself a fucking future, Painless,” said Malone. Balfe looked to one of the detectives.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what,” said the detective.
The group followed the uniformed Guard to an interview room.
“Hey, there’s a phone,” said Painless. “I could phone him here myself.”
“Only internal calls there,” said the Guard. Minogue appeared around the door.
“Sit over there, Mr. Balfe-”
“Mr. Balfe? Is this going to cost me money?”
“-and shut up.”
Balfe’s face suddenly twisted into a look of hatred.
“Don’t you fucking talk to me like that, pal! I’m here because I co-”
“No sign of an up-to-date tax disc for Mr. Balfe’s Sierra yet?” Minogue asked one of the Guards,
