Malone had found out that both of Shaughnessy“ s parents would be coming over. Geraldine Shaughnessy, the mother and Leyne’s ex, hadn’t remarried. Leyne himself was already on the plane, someone said. It was O’Riordan, Leyne’s old pal in Ireland, who had identified the body at four in the morning. It had been at the joint request of the mother and father. A representative of Leyne had faxed through the confirmation to Tynan’s office this morning.
“The blood alcohol will be done by three or so, I imagine,” said Donavan. “If you have the queue jumped. As per your routine fashion.”
“Thanks, Pierce,” said Minogue. He looked down at his notes again.
“Do you be over Glencree much still?”
“Most Sundays,” said Minogue. “More, now the autumn is here.”
“Do you suffer company?”
Minogue managed a smile.
“Stop off at the house, can’t you. We’ll take the one car up.”
“Do you hear me arguing? Remember me to Kathleen.”
CHAPTER 6
Malone jammed second gear as he sped away from the lights. He accelerated hard on the motorway.
“You know what gets to me?” he said to Minogue. “Like, really gets to me?”
“Tell me, why don’t you.”
“It’s when they’re finished. I swear to God, man. I can take the face being pulled back down; I can. The brain flopping around on the table even.”
Malone glanced over at the inspector.
“It’s when they tie up the bag.”
“The bag,” Minogue said.
“With the stuff inside it. The organs, like? They shove things back in, inside the rib cage. Now that’s what really gets me. Know what I’m saying?”
Nowharamsane. Minogue yawned. He’d been counting: seventeen APF officers on the roster. A couple of hundred staff. Cleaners, baggage handlers, drivers. Maintenance, delivery people, bottle washers. Shop assistants, pilots, stewardesses. Passengers, passengers’ families saying good-bye to passengers. Passengers’ families saying hello to passengers. Sheehy’d need twenty officers to make a dent in this.
“Reminds me of well, you know. The Christmas? A turkey or something. Sick, isn’t it?”
Minogue followed a plane’s approach out over the sea. The plane seemed to hover there over Howth. A holding pattern.
“But you have to hand it to him,” said Malone. “An art. That’s what it is.”
The flaps down, Minogue thought, and the wheels were claws searching for a place to perch. Fifty, sixty tons, were they? Jesus. All in the space of a lifetime, this stuff too. Neither his father nor his mother had been inside a plane.
“And the size of the needle, but,” Malone said and began pulling at an eyebrow.
Minogue shifted to get his notebook out. He had the phone open when it rang. It was Tony O’Leary. The family was flying in from the States very shortly.
“It’s Leyne’s jet they’re coming in on,” said O’Leary. “Boss wants to know how you stand on it.”
Minogue looked out at the broken lines of the motorway rushing by them. As if O’Leary didn’t know.
“Strangely enough, Tony, we were on the way to the airport.”
“He’s tied up until after four. He wants you to represent him.”
“Haven’t you phoned Lawlor? He could do that handy enough.”
“Says will you phone him if you can’t.”
Minogue let a few moments go by
“The mother and Leyne, is it?”
“That’s it. Probably a few people with them. Justice is sending Declan King.”
Assistant minister for Justice, King was an ex-Guard turned barrister. King had been dubbed King Declan by Kilmartin in disdainful, edgy regard for King’s talents as the minister’s principal arm-twister for Gardai. An intense pain in the face, Kilmartin avowed.
“And wants you to brief Leyne,” O’Leary added “Within reason.”
The Nissan leaned in hard on the bend. Minogue realized that he was squeezing the phone hard against his ear.
“Give me a minute there, Tony,” he managed, and muffled the receiver.
He turned to Malone.
“Take it handy for the love of God, man. And pull in after the roundabout. We might be changing the menu here.”
He took his hand off the phone.
“Let me see if I have this right, Tony. The commissioner of the Gardai wants me to brief Leyne on a murder investigation that’s hardly gotten started?”
“That’s what he wanted.”
O’Leary must have been holding his breath too.
“Leyne is an American, zillionaire frozen food tycoon and I am a Garda inspector ”
“He says he’ll let you in on the thing soon’s he can.”
“Where do we take him? In town I mean ”
“There’s a press conference set for the Shelbourne Hotel.”
A press conference, Minogue thought. “ I can’t be running around like an iijit, chaperoning some fella,” he said “I have to break this case right away. It’s speed now, at this stage. He knows that I can’t be running around the city like an iijit. Tell him that, will you.”
O’Leary said nothing. Minogue stared at a flattened Coke can in the grass.
“All right, Tony. Where’s himself at the moment anyway?”
“He’s caught up with a task force on criminal assets.”
Minogue rather liked the indignation warming his throat and chest.
“But he’ll definitely be out for the press conference though,” O’Leary said “It can double for your public appeal, if you’re having one ”
“I’ll see him there then. And I have a shopping list.”
“Say the word.”
“Fergal Sheehy’s going to need a dozen officers to get started in earnest. He has five there with him now. Forensics’s still working the site so the van’s staying put. I’ll call you in about fifteen minutes and give you a list.”
“Absolutely.”
Minogue thumbed the end button twice. Absolutely? He watched the airport buildings rise slowly above the hedges as Malone braked for the roundabout.
“Go on in, Tommy. I need to look around. The security office first.”
Malone waited until they had stepped out of the car to ask him.
“What’s O’Leary want?”
“ Cead mile failte for our American friends, Tommy. Lucky I have the spare tin whistle in the boot.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am. Can you sing ‘Danny Boy’?”
“Bollocks’ I get sergeant out of this. Just for agreeing to be here.”
Minogue stepped in front of his colleague. He gave him a hard look.
“All right so. No more playing to the gallery, Tommy. I’m a lot more annoyed than you are. You’ll be staying with Fergal at the airport. I’ll go back into town with the VIPS and head a press conference afterward.”
Malone’s grimace was almost too much for Minogue.
