pinning it to the counter. Right into the counter.
His hand came out with the fiver crunched up inside. He dropped it on the counter. The barman spoke in the same flat voice.
“Five pounds.”
What had he ever done to this guy? Was it just the way he looked or something? Did he stink and he didn’t even know it? The bar seemed to be changing around him. Christ, he really should get a decent meal before he…
“That’s a hot one, I’m telling you all right,” someone was saying. He turned. One of the oul lads. His forehead was shining.
“Yeah,” he heard himself say. “Isn’t it.”
“But there’s going to be rain like was never seen before, I read.”
Something about the oul lad’s face reminded him of something, of someone he knew. Keeping the peace, he was. He must have been reading his mind. Could he know about the knife?
“Rain…”
“Oh, that’s a fact! If you’re to believe those chancers what give the forecast.”
The glass was cool and wet in his hand. He saw the downpour beating down the leaves of the chestnut tree which he had hoped would be his home. Of course it had to piss rain, he thought. It was always that way. The minute you thought you were getting somewhere. It came to him as a pain then, like that heartburn he used to get when he was a kid. Everything wrong. Just impossible. He brought the crisps and the pint back to the table and flopped down in the seat. He’d go out later, he decided. He had money and he had a knife. He didn’t really give a damn any more.
Her eyes filled with tears. Coming here, he said, but his lips didn’t move, coming here to surprise her was a very, very stupid idea. No sleep tonight if he were to tell Kathleen. If? When. He’d have to tell her. He stared at her. Paint had dried under her nails. Strands of hair had escaped her hair-band. Some part of him must have known already, he understood.
“Is that all you can say?” she whispered. “Try to say something funny.”
Things crashed about in his head. Grandfather; babysitting; bottles; nappies. He would always remember this time, this place. The big windows with peeling paint and putty which kept the studio like a fridge in winter-the landlord’s hint to Iseult and the co-op of just how annoyed he was that he had given them such a lease before the area had become so suddenly trendy several years ago.
“Sorry,” he said. “I only meant the Immaculate part.”
He turned aside and looked down into the street below. A cluster of young people whom Minogue took to be artists of some kind crossed the street below and disappeared into the pub. A girl with hacked hair and a green tuft shooting up from the crown pedalled by. The windows in the studio were wide open but it was still uncomfortably warm. Everything seemed very far away: the rest of the buildings, the streets and lane-ways already grey, the traffic noise from the Liffey quays a street away, his memories of Iseult’s childhood.
“Well, maybe it’d be funny some other time,” she said. She pulled the apron over her head. “I’d never thought of Pat as the Holy Ghost.”
She walked over to the windows and stood next to him. That cloud was there again, the one that looked like the mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. It must be far out at sea.
“You get really tired,” she said. “I didn’t know that happened so much.”
“Well, this is your first time.”
“Don’t tell Ma-ever-but I thought straightaway of going to London. You know?”
He nodded. Like a hunter in the blind, dozing, he thought, awakening to a stampede all around him. Over him.
“It’s true,” she said. “The thing about Clare people. How they’re different. The sixth sense.”
“Clare people are cracked, Iseult. Everyone knows that. Exhibit number one here. Can we go out for a stroll or something? The fumes here are getting to me.”
She stopped in the middle of the Ha’penny bridge and leaned against the railings. The Liffey below was close to full tide. Vibrations from the passing feet came up through Minogue’s knees. A bus screeched on its way down the quays. There wasn’t a breeze.
“We must be in for a change of weather,” she said. “I’ve had a headache all day.”
Minogue let his eyes wander down the quays, taking in the sluggish swill of the river, the quayside buildings in a wash of honey-coloured light. He felt that Iseult and he were on an island in the middle of Dublin.
“I knew you knew,” she sniffed. “I felt it anyway. Really.”
“I didn’t really know,” he said. “I sort of thought maybe… Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s great news. I’m thrilled.”
She eyed him.
“Are you okay for walking here?” he asked.
“Of course I am. Typical man! It’s not an illness, you know.”
Minogue glanced at her.
“Is Pat excited?”
“He was, last time I saw him. Then he was worried. Then he went into his moron stage. Holy water and rosary beads next. Jesus, I’m still bowled over by it all.”
Minogue did not rise to the bait. He kept his eyes on O’Connell Bridge.
“Pathetic, isn’t it,” she said. “I’m ‘in trouble.’ ”
He looked over. Her nostrils were still red.
“In trouble,” he said, and frowned.
“Well, isn’t that the expression? Or is it only old fogies talk like that any more?”
“Why ask me? Come on down the quays a bit, can’t you.”
She fell into step beside him. They waited for the lights at Capel Street.
“You like Pat, don’t you?” she asked. “Still, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Even with this church stuff?”
He shrugged.
“Well, yes. Clumsy maybe, but decent, I say. Give him a chance, will you?”
Iseult stepped away from him and folded her arms. Others had clustered around them waiting for the light also. He fingered the button again. Why was it taking so long to get across here?
“What’s so ‘decent’ about wanting to get married in a church, for Christ’s sake?”
He bit his lip and kept his finger pushed against the button.
“I could still kill Pat, you know,” she declared.
“A little louder there,” he said between his teeth. “They may not have heard you in Wales.”
“I don’t bloody well care, do I? I could kill him!”
“You told me that before. The more you say it, the worse it sounds.”
“I could! I’d break his neck, so I would.”
“Stop, Iseult. That doesn’t help.”
“Huh. You just don’t like to hear it out loud. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“I don’t even know there are different sides really. It’s not like your mother would want to shanghai you either, you know-”
“Oh, come on! Are you going to fall into line with Holy Ireland too?” He glared at her.
“Well?” she prodded. “Don’t you ever take sides? Huh? Whose side are you on, Da?”
“Homicide, Iseult, if you really want to know.”
TWENTY-TWO
Kilmartin had gone home. Minogue perused the note the Chief Inspector had left him. Jack Mullen was now
