racquets came out handy enough. He used one to tap out more glass. Headlights turned into the street. He scooped up the jacket, stuffed the Walkman and the camera into it and held the racquets over the bundle. Someone shouted from far off as he entered the alley. It swallowed most of the alarm’s shrieking. He kept going. This bit was a kick in itself. He was proud of how he could still run. The close, thick air rubbed against his face. He was grinning. The alarm began to fade behind him.
Minogue was massaging his feet in the kitchen when the beeper went off. He closed his eyes, rubbed his face and swore before plucking it from his belt and clicking it off. It was half past one.
Kathleen tripped down the top of the stairs, her dress over her arm.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Minogue looked up from the pager.
“Yes, indeed.”
He went upstairs and changed while Kathleen filled a plastic bag with a sandwich, a banana, two biscuits and two tins of soda water. He picked up the beeper, looked again at the dot-matrix display flowing across the face and plotted his shortest route to the canal. At least he’d travel in style. He reversed his new car, a Citroen with electric everything and the new-car smell as potent as ever, out onto the road. He yawned most of the journey to Donnybrook where he nicked a red light at fifty-five, slowed a little for the bend and sped up again along Morehampton Road. He was awake and even alert in plenty of time to flout the no-right-turn at Leeson Street bridge. A satisfying rasp of tires came to him over the rush of night air in from the sunroof. He crossed Baggot Street bridge and parked under the trees where a small crowd stood. The yellow plastic cordon tape was up already.
Kilmartin was on him as he stepped out of the car.
“How’s James. Long time no see.”
Kilmartin yawned and peered in the window behind Minogue.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Hard to miss that UFO of yours there. How do you figure out all those fecky-doo buttons on the dash there? Anyway. Looks like Molly beat us to it. Jeepers creepers, why’d we buy those beepers?”
Minogue saw that Malone already had gloves on.
“Howiya, Tommy,” he said. “Long here?”
“Five minutes,” replied Malone. Kilmartin nodded at the gloved hands.
“You didn’t jump in for a swim and look already, did you, Molly?”
“No. I taped it off. Waiting for the lights. It’s a woman. I called the Sub Aqua.”
Kilmartin turned on his heel and made a slow examination of the street.
“Yeah,” said Malone. He nodded at a couple sitting on a bench being interviewed by a Garda. The girl was shivering.
“That pair there. It was the girl saw her first. Green stuff on it, weeds and things.”
Tings, thought Minogue. Gree-an.
“They better get married after that carry-on,” Malone added. “He’d dropped the hand.”
“What?” asked Kilmartin.
“He had his hand in her knickers when she saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“The body.” Malone had left just enough of a pause to suggest humour to Minogue.
“Was that all then?” asked the Chief Inspector.
“Hard to say. He might’ve gone the whole hog if she hadn’t started screaming-”
“I didn’t mean that!” barked Kilmartin. “I meant if she saw or heard anything in the bloody canal!”
Solemn-faced yet, Malone shook his head.
“I just had a few questions with them,” he murmured. “Then I let what’s-his-face get on with an interview. The uniform from Harcourt Street. Fallon.”
Kilmartin looked up and down the banks. Streetlights played on the sluggish waters under the trees, themselves looming, black masses darker than the night sky. Minogue smelled beery breath from the gawkers. He looked at the banks and spotted small pieces of styrofoam, coloured and slick things he took to be plastic bags. Kilmartin was talking.
“Why’s there not more of her on the surface, I’d like to know.” He grasped the railing leading up to the boards which formed the lock’s foot-bridge.
“She drifted maybe,” said Malone. “The hair got caught in the lock. Then the undercurrent pulled the feet and the legs in tight?”
Minogue noted Kilmartin’s expression. Malone might well be right. A body in water often floated almost upright. Kilmartin was looking from light to light.
“Several lights out of commission,” said Minogue. “It shouldn’t be so dark here.”
“Gurriers no doubt,” Kilmartin grunted. “Pegging rocks at the street-lamps. Is this news? Dublin’s fair city, my arse. Any sign of our crew yet?”
“Here they are now,” said Minogue. Kilmartin looked over the other side of the lock-gate. A cascade of water arched from the brimming canal below his size twelve brogues and splattered far below. He turned back to Minogue and looked over his shoulder at the crowd.
“Get the lights up,” he said to Malone. “Video. Pronto.”
“Damn,” Kilmartin went on. “Wouldn’t you know it? I have to water the horse.”
Minogue yawned as he made a quick survey of the scene, and then made his way through the crowd. Air thick with the smell of the canal seemed to settle in his lungs. There were about two dozen gawkers now. He searched the faces close to him. An intense light flared suddenly beside him before it shifted down over the water. He turned to find Paddy Dillon, a Cavan man known for wearing his tweed jacket every working day of the year. The cut of Dillon’s jacket had become misshapen by his constant storage of batteries, clips, bolts, tapes and tools. Dillon hefted the camera onto his shoulder.
“How’s Paddy.”
“Ah, Matt, me oul standby. Steady, boy. Struggling, but steady.”
“Close again tonight, Paddy.”
“Aye, surely!” Dillon’s accent gave his voice a plaintive tone. “Close isn’t it, now. It must be the weather we get for throwing in our lot with a united Europe. Oh, yes. I must say now that I can do without this degree of heat. Yes, I can.”
Minogue gave Dillon’s tweed jacket a lingering glance but Dillon was already absorbed in something else.
“Run up and down the banks first, Paddy. Anybody moves off from the crowd, get a good look, will you? We’ll be on the prowl.”
Malone led Dillon down the bank.
The quartz light turned the black water khaki. The hair was too blonde to be natural, Minogue thought. Just below the surface, the face and neck looked phosphorescent in the glare. The shoulders were covered. He began to move through the gawkers.
“What’s the story here, Chief?” The query came from one of a trio of men in their twenties. All three bore the tired, blurry expressions of men who had been drinking.
“There’s somebody under the water,” said Minogue. “For an undue period of time, if you take my meaning. Has a Guard taken your names yet?”
“Jases, no! Sure I’m only walking by on me way to get a taxi. What would you, you know?”
Minogue had his notebook out.
“To be sure,” he said. “But we have procedures, now. Naturally ye’d want to help.”
The questions came automatically. Minogue knew the pub the men cited. He squinted at the three in turn while they spoke. The alarmed righteousness in their voices grated on him less because of its boozy earnestness than because it sounded exactly banal enough to be the truth. Instead of listening closely to the men, the Inspector found himself following the canal back inland in his mind’s eye. Fed from the River Shannon, it entered the city of Dublin channelled along by terraced houses and blocks of flats, past derelict warehouses and sheds. He thought of the grassy banks out by Crumlin, the skinny kids swimming by the locks years ago. Portobello, the pillars.
One of the men was getting agitated. He had remembered talking to the barman at exactly ten o’clock. Ten,
