“Ah, he’ll turn up. He’s off the list in my book, Jim. The tape thing was pretty solid.”
“To hell with that! What did he run for, then? I’m going to tear the head off that bloody Guard-”
“Jim. I’d rather you let me do that. Really. It’s my own fault, a bit of it.”
“You don’t know how to give people a proper bollocking! You told me he was in dog-rough shape there last night.”
“He was, Jim-”
“Well, by Jesus, he was well able to leg it out of the bloody place at eleven o’clock this morning, wasn’t he? There are no less than five cars looking for him. The bastard! And us like iijits, waiting for the go-ahead from a doctor checking on him every half-hour. ‘Sleeping,’ my arse!”
Minogue waited for Kilmartin to subside.
“You asked me why he ran. He was scared we’d do him for robbing the stuff out of the car and the Egans would reach him in jail.”
“Huh. Why don’t you just phone them and tell them that you consider his alibi just grand, thank you very much. They’d appreciate that, I bet.”
“Maybe the two pints wasn’t enough to soften you up.”
“Ho ho, cowboy! You won’t get in my way when I have to tear strips off Malone. By Jesus! In our hour of need and all that. We all have to leave our personal lives at home now-well, I mean if it’s bad news now, of course. Not your happy event.”
Kilmartin suddenly sat forward.
“Here, turn around, will you! This is Dolphins Barn! Injun country, man! Turn around to hell out of this.”
“We were in the vicinity, Jim. Why not tour around a bit now that we’re here?”
“The vicinity? You’re in the vicinity of getting us into a heap of trouble.”
“When we were small,” Minogue began. He was interrupted by another belch from Kilmartin. He held his breath for several seconds until he was sure the smell had wafted by him. He steered the Citroen by rows of flats, shops shuttered save for their doorways, walls alive with graffiti.
“You were never small,” said Kilmartin. He turned and looked out the back window.
“My God, man. Did you see what road this is?”
“Tell me.”
“The bloody Egans’ place is down the way here, you gom!”
“Listen. I was saying. When we were small, we’d go into town. Ennistymon, say-”
“Where the hell is that? Look: turn this bloody car around.”
“All right. Ennis-”
“Never heard of it. Let’s get out of here. I know you’re as frustrated with this hands-off thing on the Egans-”
“Galway city then, to get a suit of clothes-”
“Did they wear clothes back then? I thought ye’d be too busy fighting off the shagging dinosaurs to be looking in shop windows. Turn this car around, for the love of Jases!”
Minogue still felt dopey from the two lunch-time pints.
“If you don’t turn the car around, I will!”
“We’d look in the shop windows,” Minogue went on. “My mother’d say, ‘Well, why not look. It doesn’t cost to have a look, does it?’ ”
“It might cost you a puck in the snot, pal. Come on, let’s get out of here!”
Minogue braked by the remains of a bus-shelter.
“Look at the place,” Kilmartin grumbled. “Beirut or something- look, there’s the car. The blue Corolla. Look at them. Oh, Christ, they’ve spotted us.”
“They’ll log us in anyway, James. Let’s mosey on over.”
Minogue parked behind the detectives’ car. Kilmartin stepped warily out onto the path after him.
“That’s right,” said Minogue. “First cousin on my mother’s side.”
Heffernan laughed. Macken, the other detective, smiled but did not take his gaze from the street. Heffernan drew on his cigarette again.
“That’s the one, all right,” he said. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“Buried in Corofin,” said Minogue. “I suppose we’re third cousins then. Or is it second cousins once removed?”
“Thought you had to be dead for that,” said Kilmartin.
“Hah,” said Heffernan. “So you have a murder then. The Mullen girl?”
“And we have to be polite and take our turn with all of ye,” said Minogue. Heffernan turned his head and winked at him.
“Being as we’re cousins and all. Here, if you think you’re put-upon here, wait ’til I tell you the kind of thing we have to swallow by the day here. Ever think you’d see the day when Special Branch officers-”
“Hardworking, conscientious Special Branch officers like the ones you are unofficially sitting with this very minute,” added Macken.
“-would be ordered to line up behind civil servants from the Revenue Commissioners and Customs?”
“Never thought I’d see the day,” said Minogue.
“It’s an affront,” said Heffernan.
“An affront,” said Minogue. “Without a doubt.”
Minogue took Kilmartin’s silence to mean that the Chief Inspector was all too aware that these two Special Branch detectives had the disquieting freedom to say anything they wanted to them. They recognized that neither member of the Murder Squad wished to be officially present in their surveillance car.
“They’ll fall between the cracks due some technicality,” said Heffernan. “It’s too complex to go right. That’s what I think.”
“Far too complex,” said Minogue. “Won’t go right.”
Heffernan shifted in his seat, groaned and looked down the street again. Rubble from a demolished building next to the Egans’ shop had been there long enough to be almost completely taken over by huge-leafed weeds, cans and plastic supermarket bags swollen with household rubbish. Why did the Egans keep a shop here, why did they not seem to care about the decay and squalor? Back up the street were buildings with blocked-in windows and doors. A pub, the Good Times. The Good Times? A bookies across the street was the only functioning building in a short block which seemed similarly slated for demolition. A gas company van was parked across the street behind a two-door Lancia which Heffernan told them belonged to Bobby Egan. The blocks of flats which had gained the area its notoriety were out of sight behind the street.
Traffic came in gluts released by a traffic light two blocks back toward the city centre. Little stopped or even slowed here on the street. Two young mothers wheeled their prams by, leaving their loud speech hanging in the air for Minogue to think about, to try to imagine what their lives were like. A trio of kids sauntered by and greeted the policemen with a combination of daring, humour and hostility. The bad language didn’t seem to have much effect on Heffernan.
“Say nothing now,” said Macken. “But there’s our Bobby. He’s out.”
Minogue’s reaction was to be cautious, to look for cover. Heffernan seemed amused.
“There’s only Eddsy and the other fella in there now,” he said. “Don’t be worrying. They know the most of us who’ve been on duty here.”
“The state of him,” Kilmartin murmured. “Walks like a gorilla. Look, the knuckles nearly running along the ground beside him.”
And he does, thought Minogue. Bobby Egan had emerged from his brother’s shop as he had entered-alone. He glanced up and down the street before settling on the unmarked Corolla and raising his eyebrows in greeting.
“Oh, here we go,” said Heffernan. “See what kind of a humour the bold Bobby is in this morning.”
“You mean he comes over to you?”
“ ’Course he does. For the chat, man. I mean to say, we’re in the same business, aren’t we? Almost. If we were social workers, he’d be our client, wouldn’t he, Ger?”
“Our case, yes. Bobby’s a case, all right. A head-case.”
