“Loves a dare,” said Heffernan. “Smart the way only a header is smart. Bobby’d eat you alive for a joke. Know what I’m saying?”
Something in Heffernan’s tone of bored wisdom pinged a bull’s-eye in Minogue’s mind.
“Oh, shit,” said Macken. “Here we go now.”
Bobby Egan ambled with a rolling gait to the car. He rubbed his hands and bent over, head next to the open window. Chewing gum slowly, heavy brows, a wide face under close-cropped hair. His eyes looked very blue. Was that a scar by his neck? Though Bobby Egan’s face close up still retained a scuffed look, Minogue could see none of the malevolence he had expected. He was well turned-out. His polo shirt had a pricey logo on it, an alligator thing, and the trousers had a sharp fold. Minogue tried to read any inscriptions on the bracelet Egan fingered.
“ ’S’lads. How’s it going.”
The smile looked genuine, thought Minogue. He nodded back.
“How’s Bobby,” said Heffernan.
“Oh, topping. And four of yous? Of a Saturday? Oooh. Very heavy, lads. Here all night again, were yiz?”
Heffernan kept up his scrutiny of an approaching van.
“You know yourself, Bobby.” Egan shrugged.
“Wouldn’t want the marriage to go on the rocks on account of having to work nights now, would we? Who’re the reinforcements in the back there?”
For an instant Minogue felt the urge to jump out of the car and go nose to nose with Bobby Egan. Was this fastidious thug the one who had slammed the senses out of Mary Mullen, slid her into the water to drown?
“CIA,” said Macken. “But keep that to yourself. It’s top secret.”
“Ha ha! Such a panic yiz are. Fella here looks like a farmer.”
Minogue stared back into Egan’s eyes.
“Well, as long as yous’re only cops, I don’t mind.”
Egan tapped on the roof and cleared his throat.
“All right so, lads. Keep it up. We all feel real safe here now, knowing that yous are around and all. Here-go in and support local enterprise here. Buy a packet of fags or something. The brother needs the money.”
He hawked and spat across the roof.
“Be seeing yous. By the way, where’s the other van, the telephone one? All the video and gear? Did one of the young lads around here rob it on you?”
Heffernan grinned and flicked his eyes skyward.
“Helicopter, Bobby,” he said. “One of the new ones, a spy one from the States. Can’t see it, can’t hear it-but it’s there all the time.”
Egan glanced up and sniggered.
“Oh, you had me there! Yous are gas! Funnier every day.”
Minogue watched Egan climb into the Lancia. He tooted the horn as he drove away.
“Bastard,” said Kilmartin. “He doesn’t know how close he is. I’d like to be there when the time comes.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Minogue. Heffernan looked over.
“How close is he to getting his wings clipped anyway?” Minogue asked.
“Well, you’d need to be up on the, em…”
“ ‘The Big Picture’?”
Heffernan’s meaty hands tapped the steering wheel.
“That’s the size of it,” he said. “I know, I know. We heard ye wouldn’t back down at all. But we’ve been after the Egans for years. We have to go for the whole thing, the whole racket, you understand? It’s not just one, well…”
“Just one murder,” said Minogue.
Heffernan pursed his lips and shrugged.
“Do you think it’s fun and games for us?” asked Macken. He sat forward in the seat, his face not a foot from Minogue’s. “See the names at the bottom of the sheet? Me and O’Hare? It’s our surveillance work that puts Bobby in the clear for the night of that murder you’re trying to sort out.”
Minogue nodded.
“So don’t be asking us what Tynan asked us here a few months back,” Heffernan added.
“Tynan?” asked Kilmartin.
“The very X,” said Heffernan. “Never in sixteen years did I hear of a Garda Commissioner sitting in on a surveillance unannounced. Drove up here one day on his own, didn’t he, Ger?”
“An Alfa Romeo,” said Macken. “Flag-red. Like a fire engine. Street threads.”
“Oh, yes,” said Heffernan. “Waltzes over to us. I’m having a stroke, I don’t mind telling you-”
“Thought it was something he et,” said Macken. “Seeing things, like?”
“ ‘Mind if I sit in?’ says Tynan. What am I going to say?”
“Ask him if he has a twin brother who’s the Commissioner,” said Macken, “and then tell him to shag off?”
Minogue smiled.
“So in he gets,” said Heffernan. “Just like you sitting there. Sits there for about twenty minutes watching the comings and goings. Hardly says one word. Gets up then, goes across the street and into the shop. Comes out a few minutes later. Throws a few bags of crisps in the window-”
“Mars bar too.”
“-Mars bar too. Don’t know whether to laugh or what. ‘Thanks,’ says I.”
“Cheese and Onion,” said Macken. “The crisps, like.”
“I mean, we all heard that Tynan’s a real pit bull when he gets his teeth into something. Look out, etcetera. You could tell he was bulling when he came out of the shop. Livid, like. Face didn’t change expression, of course.”
“That a fact,” said Kilmartin.
“Lips didn’t move,” said Heffernan, nodding. “Doesn’t get back in the car. Just stands there, staring back at the shop. Like he’s sizing it up for demolition. The fingers doing drum rolls on the roof. Says-and I’m sure he was talking to himself now-says, ‘How is it that those reptiles are still abroad?’ Didn’t he, Ger?”
Macken nodded.
“Dead on,” he said. “ ‘Abroad,’ I was thinking, you know? Thought he meant a holiday or something. Didn’t twig, the way he said it.”
“And that was when the big push started. Revenue woke up, Customs and Excise fellas started to attend the meetings. Branch Inspectors. Technicals. Task Force fellas who would step over your dead body in the hall in the normal run of things. Staff; equipment; overtime coming out our ears. Jam on the bread, the whole bit. I don’t care what anyone says about Tynan. The Iceman; the Monsignor. Tell you this: he’s the man to nail the Egans.”
“Reptiles,” said Kilmartin. He elbowed Minogue and nodded toward the Citroen.
Heffernan looked over at him.
“Are you going in to see Eddsy then?”
Eddy Egan, Eddsy, thought Minogue. A crippled reptile who commissioned pornographic pictures of girls trapped in poverty, in lousy jobs, desperate for a better life.
“I think we will.”
Kilmartin’s jaw was hanging but his eyes told Minogue enough. He put on his best blithe smile. Maybe he should have two pints of beer every lunch-time while the heat wave lasted. He stepped out onto the road and looked across the roof of the Toyota at Kilmartin.
“Are we right, Jim?”
Kilmartin caught up with Minogue before he reached the door of the shop.
“Right for what? What the hell are we up to? Wait a minute there!”
TWENTY-FOUR
Minogue stood to the side of the doorway as two teenagers stepped out of the shop. One was already tearing
