“And no sign of the handbag?”
“Divil damn the bit.”
“Sheehy and company, door-to-door…?”
“Don’t ask.”
“The quare fella, Leonardo?”
“Am I repeating myself here? No sign. John Murtagh talked to the mother again. She’s very agitated but still no lead on where he might be. Johnner has the impression she didn’t want to tell the whole story at all. I tell you, Matty, there’s a quare lot more people scared of gangsters than they are of us good guys.”
Minogue stared at the people leaving the offices along the street. He felt the phone slipping along his palms. He changed hands and wiped his free hand on his knee.
“Well, James. We’re going to sandbag this fella Ryan for a while. Then we’ll move on to Patricia Fahy.”
“‘We’ my eye,” said Kilmartin. “You might end up doing a lot of running around on your own.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“Your new sidekick. Voh’ Lay-bah. Eilis got a call for him. Personal, but I got a whiff of it though.”
Minogue opened the door and laboured out onto the street. He returned the pedestrian’s glances, the phone still jammed against his ear.
“Something to do with the brother,” said Kilmartin. “He’s out of the nick.”
He knew that rubbing it wouldn’t help, but it was driving him mental. He shifted around on the cement and shoved his knuckle into his eye. He stopped rubbing and looked across the car-park at the dust rising from the building site. Rubble had been bulldozed up into a heap and a JCB was loading it into dumpsters. He tried to open his eye again, but it hurt. He covered the eye with his palm and looked about. There was grit mixed in with the sweat on his forehead.
He watched the car-park attendant adjust the headphones on his Walkman. He thought of taking a crack at it, right here in broad daylight. Straight over, slide the knife out as he got into the doorway of the shed, right up against his belly, smiling all the time, grabbing the cash, walking off. Maybe even leave a nick on the guy’s belly to let him know he meant business. No knife, but. One-eyed too. Dreaming. He fingered out another cigarette. Instead of lighting it, he rolled it around in his fingers. He couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think straight either. He thought of the Park, the trees and shadow. Where was that herd of wild deer in the Park? And the bloody Guards’ barracks, headquarters actually, next to where he’d spent the night. Funny; dangerous. Maybe he could take a dip in that little pond he’d seen near the playing fields. No. It’d be scummy, and he’d catch some… He thought of Mary’s face with those creepy weeds across her face, those slimy green things that grew like anything, the dirtier the water, the better. Stupid, she’d gotten in over her head. But why hadn’t she told him more about what she was doing? It wasn’t like he would’ve screwed up on her, for God’s sake. And she’d thought she was so tough and everything. How nothing was going to get in her way.
He lit the cigarette and sucked fiercely on it. If she’d only trusted him a bit more, she wouldn’t be dead. He imagined her calling him out of the shadows by the canal: Liam-and it wouldn’t be Leonardo either- Liam, this guy thinks he can mess with me. With us, Liam. Do for him, Liam. Show him. And he’d clatter the guy before he knew what hit him. Karate: flying kick in the belly and then straighten him up with a boot in the snot. One for good measure in the nuts, then take the wallet or whatever. Roll him into the canal himself, see if he makes it. Go off laughing with Mary, have a few jars with your man’s stash. If she…
Stupid bitch, no! How the hell could she do it, be so stupid as to put herself in danger? It was such a mess. Such a mess. Her oul lad caused it all. He should be had up. Mary wouldn’t have been on the game at fifteen if her oul lad hadn’t been such a thick shite. A thick, fucking alco bastard. Yeah, her da should be charged with all this. The bastard. There was no justice.
He took his hand off his eye and tried again. It was watering and scratchy but the lashes parted halfway. He let them part further. Gone! At least something, some stupid bloody thing, was going his way.
Maybe just closing his eye had done the trick. He explored in the corner of his eye and found the grit. He looked at it. So small, so much trouble. Maybe that was what happened to Mary: one tiny thing. A word, a look, bad timing. She thought she knew the guy but maybe she didn’t. Had she been doing a nixer out there by the canal, just to turn a hundred quid she needed in a hurry?
The end of the cigarette tasted awful. He flicked it out onto the street. Maybe the cops were doing the exact same as he was, trying to figure out what had happened. Yeah, but they weren’t sitting here on the side of the bleeding street, baking in this idiotic weather, with no place to go, not even a place to sleep tonight. Should he try again? They probably had a lot of calls like his. The stupid cop on the switchboard had given him the phone number of the Murder Squad. Didn’t give a damn, didn’t even try to con him into talking a while. As if they didn’t want anybody’s help at all, like they knew everything or they’d do everything their own way, in their own sweet fucking time. Typical. But what could he tell them? If he sat on the phone somewhere, they’d trace him in a few seconds, Christ, everybody knew that.
He got up and stretched. It was like putting on two or three stone weight overnight, this bloody heat. He should be out at the seaside somewhere, sunning himself. He still had that kink in his back from sleeping crooked last night. What the hell time was it anyway? He walked over to the car-park attendant. He could hear the guitar riffs out of the headphones even over the noise of the traffic. The guy must be stoned. He looked at his watch. Four? Already? Christ! Had he fallen asleep somewhere along the line? The day had been a succession of tins of Coke, cups of coffee, biscuits. A hamburger, yeah. That stupid phone call. He’d walked by the pool-hall a few times too. He’d nearly gone in once. To hell with Jammy in anyhow. Even the money. It was like what’s the guy in the place they drag Jesus into and he washes his hands? Punch us the Pilot they used to call him.
He tripped on the edge of the footpath. His legs were tired, his back was aching. He stopped by a shop window and looked at his reflection against the camping equipment. His eyes came to focus on the gear in the window. A lot of this stuff would be handy for the Park. Maybe he’d get some of this stuff and head up the mountains, up the back of the Pine Forest or somewhere. A sleeping bag, waterproof pants; a compass so he wouldn’t lose his way off the paths and stuff. A gas thing to cook your dinner up on the side of Mount bleeding Kilimanjaro, boots you could probably wear in space. His eyes stayed on the knives. He studied the blades. The one he liked had a jagged bit on the top side. He fingered change in his pocket, heard it click. It was a Bowie-type knife, for skinning bears or something. Just showing a blade like that would do the business. Eighteen quid though? He would have felt a hell of a lot better last night if he’d had one of those in his hands.
All the ideas that had been buzzing around in his head stopped. The blade shone. He wasn’t just going to sit back and bleeding roll over for anyone. Everyone took him for a gobshite, Mary even. But that was history now. He wasn’t going easy, he wasn’t going to take anything lying down. He’d phone the cops. Give them a minute or two, let them have it with a few facts. Get them fucking thinking for a change. Then they might just wake up and see that it was the Egans they should be picking on. And phone Jammy Tierney too: tell him to get on to the Egans. Tell them to smarten themselves up or else. He moved toward the door but stopped and moved back. It was a small reflection of himself he had seen moving across the polished surface of the blade.
“You’re all right,” said Minogue.
Malone stood leaning in through the open door. “It’s not going to, well, you know?”
The Inspector shook his head.
“The job? No, Tommy. It stays personal. Don’t worry.”
“Christ, I could just kill him.”
Minogue took in the lines on Malone’s forehead.
“I mean to say. Look at him. He’s hardly out of the bleeding nick and he’s a walking breach of the peace again. It’s got to be drugs. It’s got to be.”
Minogue shrugged. Malone’s eyes swept down from the sky. His fist thumped on the roof.
“Fuck it! Goddamn it to-sorry. The new car and all…”
“Listen, Tommy. I’m off before you beat the car to a pulp. I’ll go to Patricia Fahy. Call in when you get the chance, okay? Home number too-any time up to about eleven.”
“Are you sure? I’d hate to think-”
“Family’s first, Tommy. Just go.”
With words rattling loose in his mind, Minogue drove off. He was still thinking about Iseult when he reached
