“What isn’t these days. All right oul son, mind the trams now.”
“Jim?”
“I know, I know — you’re in a hurry. I’ll be off if you’ll let me. What is it?”
Minogue pinched hard at the bridge of his nose. What had possessed him to come up with this question now?
“Larry Smith, Jim.”
Minogue stared at his notebook while he waited.
“What about him? What’s your question exactly?”
“Just wondering, that’s all. You were the conductor on it.”
“Well I had to be, didn’t I. It was hot from day one. It had to be done right. I took it because there’d need to be high-level consult… Wait a minute. What are you saying? What do you want?”
“Is there even a remote chance…?”
“Well. Jesus. That’s how the damage gets done, isn’t it. Not by direct inquiry, oh no, never that way. It’s the slow way, the innuendo, the bloody gossip eating away like an acid at the thing until finally — you’re actually asking me? You who worked on it with me, you who sat in on all those briefings with Serious Crimes and those gunslingers, those bloody headers from C2? You can’t be serious. No way.”
“Just asking.”
“You already said that! ‘Just asking’ my arse. See? She’s gotten to you even!”
Minogue wondered if it was Leyne’s Foods was the first of the frozen foods which had shown up in the supermarkets years ago. American Style Frozen Foods.
“Look,” Kilmartin said. “It was one or other of a pack from Belfast, I’m telling you. Devlin or Harte — they’re known hit men who take contracts. You know we can’t get them on this. Come on now — you spent two days at the site with me, didn’t you? There was nothing. Are you forgetting? The dum-dums were down to bloody bottle caps by the time they went through him. Don’t you remember? Is it her, the widow, what’s her name? Or is it the brother, what’s his name, Charlie, rabblerousmg for an inquiry? He’s an iijit, but he’s sly. The fucker. But they’re all like that.”
“Neither, Jim. No. Look, mind yourself over there now.”
The rueful tone in Kilmartin’s voice then didn’t surprise Minogue
“Hah,” Kilmartin said “The FBI. We could show them a thing or two, couldn’t we? I’m telling you, we could. The cases where the crime lab is between your ears, hah? The Yanks… don’t talk to me.”
Minogue thought of the cocked thumb last night, Kilmartin’s squint as he aimed: Smih’ goh’ hih’.
“You’re telling me,” he managed.
He ended the call, eyed the duration. The state could pay the airtime on that one. He had kept the newspaper clipping from last week’s newspaper, the preview for the forthcoming series on the Guards. He took it out of the drawer. “The Changing of the Guard”: a bit glib really. But that was good journalism, wasn’t it. “The Old Guard” later on: well, there was something noble and steadfast about that. Holding fast against a tide of criminality. Plain and simple stuff, no guff and cant. He slipped the pages back into the drawer and stared at the phone. No he wouldn’t phone Kathleen right now. He sat back, tried to plan his next hour. Couldn’t.
Larry Smith and Company, limited. The simple fact of the matter was that Larry Smith had played cowboys and he wound up in the middle of a road in Baldoyle with bits of him all over the tarmacadam. Hollow-point bullets, brutal. James Kilmartin, a senior Garda officer no less and no more frustrated than 99 percent of the Gardai, had been caught off-guard voicing his satisfaction out loud. So. In the heel of the reel, who cared about how the streets of Dublin had been cleaned of at least one serious, lifelong gouger. A vicious little bastard in his own right, incurable.
He eyed the page on Iseult again before folding it and slipping it into his pocket. He headed out into the squad room proper. Murtagh had already entered the times on the board. The credit card trail, he thought. Receipts from the States cleared in about a week now. Eilis was copying the file.
The green light from the photocopier flared and died by the corners of the cover, but some escaped to run across Eilis’s neck. He returned her blank gaze for several moments. What was bothering her?
“Emerald Rent-A-Car?” he tried.
“Not yet,” she said.
Minogue tried to map the days and places but he was soon stuck.
“This museum thing, John, if he says he’s Leyne. What’s going on there?”
“Maybe to get the royal treatment researching the forebears and all that,” Murtagh said. “The lig in, the ‘influence.’ Researching the forebears and all that? Instead of lining up like Joe Soap at the genealogy office.”
“Garland,” Minogue said. “I’ve heard of him.”
“Wait a minute. He’s got a fancy job title as I remember.”
Murtagh fingered his notebook. He looked up with a faint smile.
“ ‘Keeper of Irish Antiquities.’ ”
“I thought that was Maura Kilmartin,” from Eilis. Minogue gave her the eye.
“Garland does lectures too, so he does,” said Murtagh. “Public lectures on history. The Golden Age. Monks and what have you. How we civilized Europe.”
Minogue searched Murtagh’s face for irony.
“Anyway,” Murtagh went on. “Shaughnessy’s in Jury’s Hotel until the Monday. He picks up the car at Emerald, down off O’Connell Street. He makes sure he’s booked back into Jury’s for the weekend, starting Friday. Plane’s out on Monday. He’s planned five days of touring then.”
Murtagh rapped the board with his knuckles.
“If Donegal is good, then Shaughnessy’s there on Tuesday. Say he’s on the road most of Monday. Donegal town’s six hours driving anyway.”
“What if he went through the North, but?”
Minogue rubbed at his eyes. He heard cracking sounds from somewhere near his sinuses. If this cold went to his chest he’d be shagged for a fortnight.
“Her Majesty’s would give us time and place on this, John. Without much sloothering around the issue, I mean. It’s not political.”
Murtagh scrutinized the map.
“Might have gone through Strabane.” He tugged at his lip. “Up to… ”
“Letterkenny,” said Minogue, “and points north. Derry maybe.”
He squinted at the timetable again.
“Who exactly filed the C65 to Missing Persons anyway?”
Murtagh capped his marker. Eilis answered the phone.
“I don’t know yet. But there were the calls from the States. And Billy O’Riordan.”
“All right so,” said Minogue. “Find out exactly, will you?”
Eilis was holding the phone up when he opened his eyes again. Three sneezes this time. His nose felt like a burst football.
“Fergal Sheehy,” she said “He’s on. Needs the money, says he. Will you brief him now or do you want him to stop by on the way to the airport?”
CHAPTER 5
Malone turned the nissan into Beaumont Hospital. The autopsy was set for eleven.
“How many’s this for you?” he asked Minogue.
“This’ll be thirty-seven.”
Malone cleared his throat again. He yanked the ticket from the parking robot thing and drove through as the boom lifted.
Minogue hated this hospital. Unreasonable, he knew, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that all this space here made it too quiet. Easy for him to say, was Kathleen’s take on this. He hadn’t been jammed into Mercer’s Hospital or Jervis Street in the middle of a Dublin summer for a bloody delivery, had he?
