“You’re on holidays, Jim. What do you want?”
“The fella at the airport. He’s ours now, I take it. Who is he? The Yank?”
“Don’t you like holidays, Jim? Give ’em to me if you — ”
“Shag off, will you. You’d only waste them canoodling around dives in the arse end of Paris or something. Who’s the new case, I said.”
Minogue tried to condense it into three sentences.
“Leyne,” said Kilmartin. “He went big with frozen foods first didn’t he? Potatoes, was it? Chips.”
“I think it was.”
“And the whole frozen food thing took off. Yes. What’s the son doing here?”
“A tourist, it looks like.”
“Looking for his roots, was he?”
Minogue waited for Kilmartin to work his way around to asking about Tynan.
“Robbed at the airport? Then murdered?”
“We’re not up on placing him yet.”
“Jesus. ‘Cead Mile Failte,’ et cetera. How long’s he missing?”
“Six days. We can place him in a B amp; B in Sligo. He was booked into Jury’s Hotel here, but never showed. Then he didn’t appear for the flight either.”
“He traveled bed-and-breakfast down the country but then he went back to tycoon class when he hit Dublin?”
Minogue’s eyes prickled. He held the phone away. The sneeze didn’t come immediately. He tried squinting at the fluorescent lights with his eyelids half open. Kilmartin was still talking.
“That’s right, Jim,” he tried.
“What time?”
“It was getting on for half-three when I jacked it in at the site.”
“What? He phoned you at half-three this morning?”
“What did you ask me again, Jim?”
“Tynan! I asked you if you’d heard from him lately!”
The sneezes rocked Minogue. Four in a row: he scrambled for paper hankies he hoped he’d kept in the bottom drawer. A final sneeze left him head down, dripping onto a file folder. He let the phone down and swiveled around. He wiped the phone last.
“Mother of God,” said Kilmartin. “That’s dog rough, what you have. But I’ll tell you one thing, we’re all victims of foul play here. You getting pissed on at a site last night, me getting the treatment from the Iceman. Eight o’clock this morning for the love of God. The frigging Inquisition. When did he pounce on you?”
“Nine or so.”
“What’s he want to talk to you for? It’s me he’d want to slice and dice.”
Minogue let his eyes wander along the frosted glass wall of his cubicle He lingered on the black-and-whites of the footprints from the Dunlaoghaire Park murder. Ninety quid Nike runners, half-burned. His eyes finally settled on the road map of Ireland. Sligo. Had Shaughnessy been heading up to Donegal or down to Mayo? Where had the “touring the west of Ireland” bit come from anyway?
“Well, there’s a series being done on the Guards,” he said to Kilmartin. “He said to watch what I say.”
“Talk about the understatement of the frigging century. Are we running a police force or a PR outfit, I hope you asked him. Where did he put in the knife anyway?”
“He got word of some items overheard at the Garda Club.”
Minogue thought he heard the intake of breath in the pause.
“Is that a fact now,” Kilmartin said. “Let me tell you about that. That’s what has dropped us all in it. Hey, did you recognize her there? That bitch, what’s her name…?”
The Holy Family, Minogue thought. Iseult on a rant about patriarchy.
“Well she sort of looked familiar but…”
“I only got word on this newspaper thing, this profile thing, at one of Tynan’s come-all-yes there a month ago. I mean to say, does anyone actually go for this ra-ra stuff, open-house, relationship shite? Anyone who’s been in the job more than six weeks, like? Anyone with time on the beat? Anyone with a brain bigger than a shagging pea? Anyone smarter than Lawlor trying to feather his nest for promotion?”
The counties had yellow borders. County Sligo was the collar on the teddy bear that was the map of Ireland. Donegal Bay there, then the ocean. He’d never liked Sligo. He didn’t know why really. Maybe it was because it was in the way of getting to Donegal, his real destination on holidays years ago.
“Well?” Kilmartin said again. “Am I tarred with the Smith thing?”
“I don’t know, Jim. Things get around though.”
“Ch-a-rrist! A man can’t voice an opinion without some gobshite hiding in a corner and making a big deal about it! Had she nothing better to do?”
Minogue detached the phone from his ear. Hard to blame Kilmartin really.
“Well how in the name of Jases did that bitch get into the bloody club in the first place anyway? Answer me that one, if you can! Lawlor brought her, that’s how. It was Tynan started this whole thing, getting the press to play ball — and now look!”
Minogue’s extension buzzer stopped Kilmartin. It was Murtagh.
“A few things coming in,” Murtagh said. “They had Shaughnessy on the news this morning. Woke a few people up. Four phone calls came in to Missing Persons. Donegal, two of them, one from some place called Falcarragh. A local station. A call from a couple who run a bed-and-breakfast near town.”
“Falcarragh,” Minogue said. “Which days?”
“Early last week, before the Sligo B amp; B. The other one’s a guest house in Glencolumbkille.”
Glencolumbkille, almost as far west as you could get in Donegal.
“Here’s a wobbler for you,” Murtagh went on. “A call came from the museum.”
“The museum, here in Dublin? To do with Shaughnessy?”
“Yep, above on Kildare Street. There’s a Sean Garland phoned. Says he thinks this Shaughnessy came in for a chat awhile ago. Yep, a week or ten days back. He thinks Shaughnessy was asking about something or other. But here’s the thing: he didn’t come in as any Shaughnessy, says Garland. Garland saw the picture in the morning paper. He thinks that your man used the name Leyne. So there.”
Minogue dabbed at his nose and pulled out his photocopy of the Fogra Toradh notice. Missing person: Patrick L. Shaughnessy. L for Leyne? Why didn’t he know the dead man’s middle name?
“All right, John. Give me a minute here.”
He underlined Glencolumbkille, took his hand off the cell phone’s mouthpiece.
“You’re on the move it sounds like,” Kilmartin said.
“The news this morning seems to’ve stirred the bushes a bit.”
“I won’t keep you — just keep me posted if Tynan goes haywire on this rubbish at the club, do you hear me? While I’m away?”
“To be sure.”
“Write this down; I forgot to give it to you.”
Minogue copied Kilmartin’s son’s address. The Palisades? White flight?
“If anything comes up, in the papers or otherwise,” Kilmartin said. Glencolumbkille, Minogue thought, the strand beyond the folk village there.
“And here’s Brian’s fax number.”
Minogue scribbled it down
“And his e-mail — ”
“It’s all right, I’ll phone if there’s trouble.”
“Here: is it Jamesons with you? Or do you expect Bushmills?”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Oh, and what does Kathleen dab behind the ears, Maura wants to know.”
“Bushmills too, I think.”
“I bet you don’t even know. You bostun.”
“Chanel number something. A black lid. It’s pricey.”
