Fahy’s house.
Patricia Fahy’s father was itching to say something. He stood with his arms folded in the hall looking at Minogue. Missus, a compact, harassed-looking woman with a big chin and a sagging neck, had gone upstairs to get Patricia.
“Hot again today, Mr. Fahy.”
“Too hot,” said Fahy. Minogue tapped the envelope on his palm.
“Is the kitchen free maybe?” Fahy shifted his feet.
“Free for what? Yous were here with her already, in case you forgot.”
Minogue heard murmurs upstairs. The house was tidy and newly decorated. One of the advantages of having an unemployed father.
“Oh, no, Mr. Fahy. I didn’t forget. It’s Patricia who did the forgetting.”
“And what does that mean?”
Minogue nodded in the direction of the top floor.
“Does she always take a snooze in the afternoon?”
“The doctor gave her a sleeping pill. What was that about-”
“Any unfamiliar cars or people hanging around the street since we talked?”
“Wait a minute there… As a matter of fact, no.”
Minogue heard scuffing from upstairs, feet crossing a rug or a carpet. He eyed Fahy.
“We can nail them, Mr. Fahy,” he said. “We can, you know.”
Fahy nodded his head several times but the eyes told Minogue it was scorn. Patricia Fahy’s feet moved hesitantly down each step. She had a long dressing-gown on. Veins stood out by her heels. She stopped on the bottom step, one hand on the dressing-gown by her neck and the other on the banister.
“Yeah?” she said. Her voice had a sleepy, fearful alertness to it.
“Hello, Patricia. I need to talk again.”
“But I told you everything. I mean…”
“Just a chat, Patricia, and I’ll be on my way.”
She looked down at the floor in the crowded hall. Minogue tapped the envelope on his palm again and saw her eyes dart over.
“The kitchen, is it?” He turned to Fahy and his wife in turn. “Just the two of us, thank you.”
Patricia Fahy’s hand slipped on the handle of the teapot as she poured. The clatter of the cup and saucer brought a question through the door from her mother.
“No, Ma,” she called out. “It’s only the teapot!”
She pushed her hair away, glanced at the envelope he had laid on the table and lit a cigarette.
“Well, what is it?” she said.
“I found the photos of you, Patricia. I’m still looking for the ones of Mary.”
Her head lowered. She stared at the envelope. Minogue watched her eyelashes.
“It’s time to talk, Patricia. We need to move on this.”
She drew on the cigarette but did not brush her hair back.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “We’ll see you right. Just quit stonewalling.”
She pulled on the cigarette again.
“It’s bad for everyone, Patricia. For you most of all right now.”
She seemed to curl up. He could see her scalp. Her head was almost on the table now.
“Patricia?”
She let her forehead fall onto the edge of the table. Her hands came around under her armpits. Her back began to shake. The cigarette burned in the ashtray. He looked around the kitchen again.
“Patricia? Patricia. I’m not here to threaten you. Do you understand that?”
She shuddered and sniffed.
“I have a daughter your age. I’m talking to you sort of as a parent, Patricia.”
“Oh yeah?” she sobbed. “You’re here to put the law on me.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this stuff before?”
“I don’t know! All I know is that you can do what you like.”
“We want to get whoever killed Mary.”
“And you’re going to trample all over me for that.”
Minogue looked around the kitchen again. She blew her nose.
“Here,” he said. “Take the envelope. It’s your stuff. Do what you want with it.”
She kept pulling at strands of hair by her ear. Crying had made her face puffy.
“So,” she said. She fished out the cigarette and took several drags from it.
“Nothing’s for free. What do you want?”
“Who has pictures of Mary?”
She shivered and looked out the window.
“Eddsy Egan, I suppose,” she said. “Bobby, maybe.”
“Do you know for sure?”
“How could I?” Minogue stared at her.
“Where was Mary on the night she got murdered?”
“Don’t know.”
“Listen, Patricia-” She turned toward him with her hands wringing the air.
“I swear to you! Jeesis! What am I supposed to say? You want me to make up stuff for you so’s you can go away happy, is it? Look-that was just her way! She wouldn’t tell anyone, would she? I remember once she said that. ‘Don’t lean on anyone. They’ll let you down when you need them the most.’ Something like that. She never let on where she was going or who she was with. I used to think that-well, I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“Christ, I don’t know-that it was just a put-on.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Ah, come on. Like she was the Southside, glamour-doll type. Putting it on, you know? ‘You take the bus,’ she used to say. ‘I prefer my Mercedes.’”
“A Mercedes-”
“It was a, an expression with her, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe you saw her once in a Mercedes, did you?”
She squinted at him.
“Are you joking me? Didn’t I say it was just an expression. The way you’d say, I don’t know, ‘Bob’s your uncle.’ Yes, she’d say that the odd time: ‘I prefer champagne.’ Messing, you know?”
Minogue examined the scribbles in his notebook. His biro slid around like wet soap against his fingers.
“Don’t you ever hear people talk like that?” she was saying. “Well, younger people, like?”
He glanced up at her. Younger people. Huh.
“‘Ooohh, Alan wouldn’t like that.’ Putting it on, like.”
“Alan?”
“Joe, Pat, Alan. Anyone.”
“Why ‘Alan’?”
“It’s just an example. Don’t you get it?”
Her forehead wrinkled.
“Everyone has their own expressions. Families, like?”
“Mary said that: ‘Alan wouldn’t like that’?”
She blew smoke from the side of her mouth and looked away.
“Could have been Mary. I just heard it, you know, the way you remember things in bits? It’s a snotty-type name. ‘Alan.’ ‘Jonathan.’ You know what I’m saying? Maybe it was her who said it, maybe that’s why it sticks in my mind. I don’t know.”
“But it could have been Mary? Try to remember, Patricia.”
“I am trying! Jases. I can’t even think straight with that pill. I told you the last time.”
Minogue sat back.
