You know?”
Minogue nodded.
“What am I going to do though? Here’s me own brother being pulled into this crap and I’m going to sit by? I can’t. But if I have him picked up… I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“Go to your ma’s, Tommy. Phone me.”
“You sure?”
“Go. I’ll square it with the Killer. But phone me.”
“Well,” said Kilmartin. He capped the marker and stepped away from the board. Minogue put down the copies of the statements. He looked at Kenny’s name and followed the line for the evening.
“Julie Quinn,” said Kilmartin. “Kenny’s fiasco. Spotless alibi all evening.”
Minogue pressed his fingers harder onto the desk-top until the nails went from pink to white.
“Does she know anything about his extra-curricular activities, the night-clubbing? Mary Mullen?”
“She said that she’s been to the clubs with Kenny. Never heard of a Mary or anything about the case. I told her then what was up. She came on strong, Matt, I tell you. Shocked that his name would have come up at all. She started giving me a list of people I could call to check on her little Alan. References, the story of their romance, what she had for breakfast-”
“They live together, right?”
“They do,” replied Kilmartin. “Didn’t hesitate to tell me either. She’s as clean as a new brush.”
Minogue stopped pressing down with his fingers and watched the nails turn pink again.
“So Alan Kenny has all the more to protect then,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“That we really don’t know how he’d react if Mary Mullen tried to blackmail him with snapshots. Would he care a damn? Would this Julie Quinn? I just don’t know. He’s no mug. I think he’s the kind of fella who’d want to see them, to prove they exist.”
“So there’s still the two separate worlds: Ms. Quinn the fiasco, all the linen and lace, and then the slumming and slagging around with Mary Mullen. How’d he hold it together?”
“ ‘The edge’, Kenny calls it.”
“ ‘The edge’? Slinky suits and hair-dos. Telephone in the pocket. I see more of them every day. The type’d cut you in two in the traffic. Frigging counter-jumpers. And they want everything now, right this minute. A crooked breed we’re rearing these days, with our United Europe shite. Christ, man, we were better off in the bog.”
“You were maybe.”
Kilmartin’s eyelids drooped.
“Is that the way with you? Busy pissing on the Kenny blackmail idea, but I don’t seem to remember you leaping across the floor and into my office there with the case cleared. Did I miss that?”
Minogue kept his gaze on the statements on his desk. Kilmartin turned his head.
“Whose is that?”
“Tierney, James Tierney. Patricia Fahy’s beau.”
“Are you getting anything from it maybe?”
“A headache.”
“Speaking of which, where’s Molly? Voh’ Lay-bah, the owil yuu-nion’s nummbahr waahn!”
The Chief Inspector suddenly waltzed across the floor.
“ He wheels his wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying cockles and mussels
Alive-alive-O ”
He turned on the balls of his feet and let his imaginary partner rest on his arm.
“Next dance, please. Well, where is he?”
“Jimmy: give over. He has stuff to deal with.”
“And we don’t?”
“Don’t come to me looking for half your jawbone if you push him over the edge. Call it quits.”
“No sticking power, that’s the problem. If Molly can’t-”
“Who scored the winning goal for United on the night of Mary Mullen’s murder?”
“What? Who cares? Why the hell would I know that?”
“James Tierney knows. It’s in his statement.”
“So?”
“And the other goal-scorers. The penalty that was missed. The fella given the yellow card.”
“Oh, great. Soccer is a load of cobblers anyhow. Curriers, beer cans, riots. Like England.”
“I wonder if his girlfriend is so keen on it. Patricia Fahy.”
“On what? The you-know-what?”
“The soccer.”
“I hope not-”
Minogue grabbed the phone before it had finished its first ring.
“My God, you’re fast,” said Kathleen. Minogue sat back and let out a breath.
“For a married man,” he said. “Is it yourself that’s in it, love.”
Kilmartin nodded and moved off. Kathleen asked if he would be home for tea. The Inspector didn’t know whether he had an appetite or not. He told her he’d probably have to stay late. She talked about an apartment which had come on the market today. He felt the outside of his coffee mug. The back of his tongue was still sour and chalky nearly an hour after he had drunk the last cup. He looked down at the file folder of statements he had been reading and began to push the cup around it. Like a boat trying to land on an island, he thought. The mug slowed. He pushed harder and it tipped.
“Goddamn that bloody-!”
“Pardon?” asked Kathleen. “Pardon?”
He grasped the corner of the folder and yanked it up. Sheets slid and darted out, floating down to the floor. The coffee spread in a pool the size of a saucer. A map the shape of Africa, he thought.
“Spilled something,” he said. “Give me a minute.” He laid the receiver down and dithered. Kilmartin reappeared by the desk.
“Christ, you’re an awful messer,” said the Chief Inspector. He took out a packet of paper hankies, dropped them on the desk and began picking up the statements. Minogue dropped the tissues at strategic intervals over the spill.
“Use the tail of your shirt,” said the Chief Inspector. “Like the rest of the Clare crowd.”
Minogue lifted a saturated hanky and squinted at Kilmartin.
“Jim. Thanks. Now go out and play on the train lines There’s a Cork train due.”
“Ah, howiya there, Kathleen,” Kilmartin called out. “Take him home, will you. He’s losing the run of himself here.”
Minogue spoke between clenched teeth.
“Jim says hello.”
“Do you see an end to it all soon, love?” she asked.
“Not really. I’m trying to find anything we might have missed.”
“Ah. Well, have you spoken to her?”
Minogue looked down at the brown mess where his coffee had been. Definitely Africa. He wondered if his headache would get worse.
“Who?”
“Iseult. Your daughter.”
“Sorry. No. I tried the flat, but there was no answer. Listen, did she drop a hint as she flew the coop?”
“She just leaped up from the table and out the door with her. It’s the wedding. The cancellation, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe there’s some way to talk her out of it. Get her to see reason. Talk to poor Pat maybe?”
