about it. Farrell had been in Serious Crimes for six years. He now floated between Drugs and Fraud task forces. Tynan had set up task forces to hit drug dealers when they tried to move their money. Sheehy had gotten in with the Farrell — Jesus Farrell — in part ownership of a racehorse called Stick-Up. The name had been Farrell’s idea. Sheehy maintained it gave the horse a psychological edge.
“Farrell,” said Eilis into the phone. “Tell him Kilmartin.”
Sergeant Eoin Farrell had come by his nickname three years ago after a meticulously planned setup engineered by himself and the then CO of Serious Crimes aimed at nailing a gang of bank robbers some years ago. The leader of the gang survived being shot several times in an exchange of fire on Moibhi Road only to awaken in a hospital bed with Farrell, his estranged boyhood friend from Rooskey, County Roscommon, watching him. The first two words he uttered then were to instantly cling as the definitive nickname for Farrell
That wasn’t all, however.
A cousin of Farrell’s had gone character witness for the wounded gang leader but the sentence was fifteen years all the same. Kilmartin heard a rumor that Farrell had later met that cousin at a point-to-point horse race some weeks later and gotten into a barney over some words exchanged — set-up and shot-seven-times. The cousin did not press charges after Farrell gave him a hiding, Kilmartin reported, because the cousin claimed not to have known that the gunman had actually opened up with a submachine pistol on a Garda pursuit vehicle.
“Curse of God on it,” Eilis hissed. She had definitely dyed the hair, Minogue decided. Titian, was that the term?
“Voice mail. It’s a damned disgrace, that’s what it is. I hate it.”
“I’ll be attending on the PM, Eilis.”
“Well who’s the ringmaster here for this, so?”
“John Murtagh. I don’t know who’ll work the airport yet. Fergal, I’d like. Tommy Malone and myself will be pairing up for today at least.”
Eilis nodded at the door to Kilmartin’s office.
“Will you be wanting in there?” she asked. “The extra line, the leather chair?”
Minogue put down the photocopies of the overnight faxes from the States, the Missing Persons press releases. He peered through the blinds at Kilmartin’s office.
James Kilmartin had been as quick to scorn as he’d been to get on the right side of the Euro-junket- consulting-conference carnival that had become mainstays of upper-level positions in the public service. And he’d played the fittings and furniture game shrewdly. New office furniture, made-to-measure suits, and requisitions for conference facilities had followed in short order. Kilmartin had made Minogue try out his new leather chair, rabbitting on about ergonomics and invisible stress. The time was long gone, Kilmartin had declared, when the head of the most respected unit in the Gardai had to hang his head when he had VIPS domestic and foreign coming through his offices.
Minogue felt a sneeze coming on. Conducting site work in the pissings of rain for a few hours last night was hardly conducive to health. He stood very still, his eyes on the blank Trinitron at the far end of the conference table in Kilmartin’s office. The sneeze didn’t come.
“Are you storming the palace, is it,” from Eilis. “For the duration, like?”
“No,” he said “I won’t bother me head. It’s only a holiday, not a coup.”
He trudged back to his own partitioned cubicle. Malone called it the Art Gallery, Kilmartin called it Bedlam, Eilis checked regularly to see if Minogue had put up new Magritte postcards. He dropped the Shaughnessy file on his desk. He didn’t believe Kilmartin’s excuse for not catching the Boston flight this morning. The diversions to Shannon or Manchester would’ve all been swallowed up by now.
There was a section of a newspaper folded on top of the phone. He opened it and turned it around. He barely saw Iseult’s name at the beginning of the first paragraph before a sneeze made him buckle. It hurt. He leaned on the table and waited, his teeth clenched. Damn, was that prostate? Prostrate from the prostate.
He sat up again. It was one of these free papers they gave out, three-quarters advertising. Garden furniture, vaccuum cleaners, new kitchens. He didn’t recognize the thing in the picture. It looked kind of like a sausage. Maybe it had been arranged with the harsh lighting to show up the shadows of the barbed wire so sharply. Vicious, really. He wiped his nose. Eilis was standing in the doorway when he turned to sneeze again. John Murtagh had shown up from somewhere too.
“Nice one there,” Murtagh said “A bit of celebrity there boss.”
“Nice what?”
“This gets delivered around our place,” said Eilis. “Does she know about it?”
Minogue wiped his nose again He picked up the pages. The Holy Family? He knew Iseult had been working with modeling clay recently. He knew because he’d caught her trying to lift what felt like a hundredweight of the damned stuff up the stairs to her studio. Six months pregnant, up till all hours working on things. Hormones were no excuse.
The Holy Family…? The dinner plate looked real. The eggs and rashers and brown bread were close but they looked a bit dead. But that was probably the idea. Plaster, it must be. Or could it be plasticene — then his eyes locked onto the words: “… father a senior officer in the Garda Murder Squad… ”
He sat back, held the paper away more. There was mention of County Clare in the interview. Holy wells at Barnacarraig; childhood visits to the zoo. Her first Holy Communion, altars and holy picture. Blood and flowers: what the hell was that supposed to mean? He skipped through the paragraph. “Bold.. startling. searing…” A quote from a gallery owner that Iseult Minogue was prodigously talented. Family violence, Ireland in turmoil: a paean. A paean?
The last paragraph had pregnancy, love, rage. Then there was an admission that people would easily interpret this as a reflection on her own personal history as a woman in Ireland. An artist on fire. Minogue let the paper fall on his desk and he sat back Christ on the cross.
“That’s the first thing I thought of,” Eilis said.
He had said it aloud? She nodded at the paper.
“There’s that iconography there,” she added “It’s obvious.”
“What’s obvious?” Murtagh asked.
“Motifs,” said Eilis. “Plain as the nose on your face. See the cross there in the background? Behind the table there?”
“Motives,” Minogue said. “What motives?”
“ Motifs, I said.”
“Looks good on you, boss,” said Murtagh. “And the missus, of course.”
The missus, Minogue wondered; the missus will freak.
“It’s the rearing,” Murtagh added.
“Iseult’s going to be famous,” said Eilis.
Minogue looked from Eilis to Murtagh and back. He studied the picture again. A greasy Irish breakfast. The barbed wire, the crucifix. Motifs?
“She makes a point of saying it’s not her,” said Eilis. “Personally, like.”
Minogue let it drop back onto his desk. Murtagh picked it up and whistled.
“Don’t you get it?” Eilis asked again.
“Tell me what to get, Eilis.”
“It’s like that poem, Larkin. ‘Your mum and dad, they’ — well, have you heard that one? Philip Larkin?”
“He’d dead, but, isn’t he?”
“‘Your mum and dad, they… mess you up.’ Do you get it now?”
The call from Kilmartin saved Minogue.
“What,” was Kilmartin’s greeting, “are you bloody paralyzed and you couldn’t use a phone? Too heavy to carry, was it?”
“Forgot, Jim. The battery was low. I must have forgotten to switch it back.”
“Get off the stage,” said Kilmartin. “Pack of lies there! Try again.”
“All right. I turned it off because I don’t like the damned thing.”
“You’re a bollocks, Matt. What use is a cell phone if you won’t use it!”
“I’ll try again. To adapt better.”
“I’ll line you up for a course on it or something. How to relate to it.”
