wasn’t it, Lar, he kept saying to one of the others. Ten, right? Ruygh, Lar, waznit? Kilmartin would goad Malone plenty if he heard a Dublin accent like that. Minogue told him to calm down. He didn’t bother to ask him why he appeared so frantic to reassure a Guard.
Here in the south city centre, the canal water idled in the shade of trees. The architectural glacier which had begun to grind through Dublin in the early sixties had left the city pitted with office buildings so ugly that they absorbed light and space from the streets they had been driven into. Many of the most ferociously insipid of those buildings had been deposited by the canal. Pockets of older houses still remained by its banks, however, and several times over the years, the Inspector had noted the glossy red doors and the restored brickwork, the Saabs and the freshly painted railings. Sunday supplement style or not, he commended people for wanting to live here by the canal. Along with the daily ebb and flow of office workers and cars, they had soaring rates of burglary and car theft to contend with for their troubles.
“…and then I switched to the rum and Cokes. That was at last call, right, Lar?”
Minogue eyed Lar who gave him a tired smile and shrugged.
“So then we were sort of wondering where we’d go, you know? I was all on for getting a burger. Remember, Lar?”
Minogue scratched at his scalp with his pencil and stared out over the man’s head into the shadows beyond the lock. He remembered stopping the car by the canal bank some weeks ago to eye a nearly completed block of apartments by Percy Place. Sharp, aggressive corners, he recalled; windows in odd places and green-shaded glass; a lot of industrial-looking metalwork. Within a mile of where he now stood, the canal emptied into the docks where the River Liffey met Dublin Bay. Few craft came inland through those locks any more. Barges which had ferried Guinness and turf were decades disappeared from the canal, and aside from the few pleasure craft, the trickle of passenger traffic on the canal came from sporadic efforts to restore barges enough to get a licence to run cruise- and-booze trips between locks.
Episodic clean-ups had dredged up disheartening and marvellous tons of scrap from the canal. A youth group had found a 1957 Triumph motorbike in the canal some years ago and restored it to working order. A badly rusted rifle thought to have been thrown in during the Civil War had been placed in the museum. More people decried the degradation of the canal year by year. Something would have to be done. Minogue noted the same words cropping up in the Letters to the Editor: architectural rape; heritage; dastardly. There had been a symposium on the rebirth of the canal system, proposals of strict controls on planning permission, keen talk of demolishing some of the grosser buildings, of a rebirth.
“So there we are,” said Lar. “That’s how we got here.”
Minogue looked from face to face. They looked like schoolboys caught in a prank. One of them was swaying slightly. Someone stifled a belch. The Inspector let his eyes linger on the one who appeared most drunk. Then he checked his notes by asking one of the men the same questions about what he had been drinking. He eyed Lar, their erstwhile leader. They weren’t planning to drive home, were they? Christ, no-no way! Lar was very emphatic. His cohorts shook their heads a lot and murmured. Minogue checked their addresses and telephone numbers again. He eyed them again and let them go. He watched the lights playing on the surface of the water.
Minogue had walked the canal banks some weeks ago with his daughter, Iseult. It had been after a lunch when she had asked him some very odd questions about when he and Kathleen were courting. He had watched insects humming in the green light over the water while his daughter talked about her work. Lulled into a dreamy state by the lunch and the summer heat, he had fancied the stately passage of a barge as it glided by Pale towns and pastures of two hundred years ago. Over the low roar of traffic he even heard the ladies murmuring to one another under their parasols, the horse’s soft clop on the tow-path, the occasional calls of the bargee.
Minogue yawned and began to cast around for a ranking uniformed Guard. He caught sight of a sergeant. Callinan had a brother in HQ in the Park. He headed down the bank toward him and shook hands. Callinan, Donal Callinan, tugged at his ear and shifted his weight. His gaze stayed on the banks while he listened to the Inspector.
“Leave us a few lads to secure the site if you please, Donal. Might as well start the others up along the banks now. We’ll have the lights on proper in a few minutes, now.”
Callinan nodded and plodded off. Minogue sought out Dillon.
“Parked cars too, Paddy. Both sides of the canal and the opposite sides of the street.”
Dillon wiped his brow again. Heat or concentration had made his tone querulous.
“Right ye be, Matt. God, it’s dasprat hot.”
Minogue eyed Dillon’s jacket again.
“Give me a Polaroid, Paddy, will you? I want a few things here.”
Dillon nodded toward the van. Another technician Minogue could see only in silhouette against the interior light was setting up tripods under the lamps.
Kilmartin coughed next to him.
“There they are,” he said. Minogue turned and saw two vans from the Garda Sub Aqua unit reversing up the footpath. Kilmartin continued to adjust the sit of his trousers by standing on one leg and stretching out the other as he pulled at the waist.
“Man alive. Taking a leak behind a tree in the middle of Dublin. It’s degrading. It was that bloody punch at Hoey’s wedding, I’m telling you.”
“Not the few pints and the small ones?”
“Shag off. Get a real job. Away we go, now. Are we right?”
Minogue winked at Malone and followed Kilmartin under the tape.
Kilmartin sat down heavily on the bench, tore off the plastic gloves and lit a cigarette.
“The hair’s caught all right. Give the frogmen another minute.”
The smoke from Kilmartin’s cigarette rose and was caught in the glare of the lights.
“Damn,” he muttered. “This’ll shape up to be a right pain. Between the bloody water and the filth all up and down here… Hope to God we nail an admission or bulletproof evidence well away from this kip. We’re sunk if we have to rely on site evidence here, man.”
Malone stepped up the bank, shielding his eyes from the glare around the lock.
“Hoi, Molly. Any breakthroughs on the case yet?”
Malone’s face didn’t register the jibe. The gawkers had thinned down to a half-dozen. There were uniformed Guards from Donnybrook and Harcourt Street up and down the banks now. Feeney, a doctor on the coroner’s panel, was sitting in his car reading by the interior light, his legs out the door. He had wire-rimmed framed glasses with a tint and styled hair, something Minogue regarded as flagrant vanity in a man trying to walk away backwards from fifty.
“Got ahold of the lock-keeper,” said Malone. “Says the lock hasn’t been opened since the day before yesterday.”
“Unnk,” said Kilmartin. He cleared his throat. A frogman surfaced and grasped a rail by the lock. The slick black head gleamed and the goggles flashed as he shook his head.
“Can hardly see a bleeding thing down there,” said Malone. “Even with the lights.”
He had already relayed the frogman’s description to Missing Persons, Minogue knew.
“Well,” said Kilmartin. “Have to get her out. Let’s decide.”
“Open the lock a few inches, I say,” said Minogue. “Let her out slow.”
“Why not cut the hair?” asked Kilmartin. “And not risk flushing evidence down?”
Minogue didn’t know. He wished Hoey were here.
“We could secure her and open the gates a bit,” said Malone. “Pull her back then, like.”
“‘Loike,’” said Kilmartin. He alone smiled. Malone kept looking at the frogman’s head.
“All right,” said Kilmartin then. “Best idea I’ve heard yet. Go tell ’em to set it up.”
Minogue checked with Callinan. Still no shoes or handbag. Both officers watched Malone take the rope from the diver’s hand. Callinan scratched his armpit.
“Yiz are going to pull her out, is it,” he said.
“Send yours down to the bridge. See if anything goes through when we open it.”
Callinan joined the dozen Guards in shirtsleeves gathered by the lock. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the gawkers who remained, watching as the lock-keeper, a middle-aged man with no neck, white hair and a black
