Malone slapped the wheel and turned to Minogue.
“That’s her! How’d you know?”
CHAPTER 8
The lab had sent eimear kelly over. She sat by Murtagh’s desk reading her notes with an intent frown. Minogue sat on the edge of the desk. How did the windows get so grimy so fast here, he wondered. Eilis clapped bundles of photocopies on the top of the photocopier.
Murtagh had photos up on the boards.
“He says he’s waiting on ones from two other fellas,” he called over to Minogue. “They’re freelancers.”
Minogue scrutinized the faces. Everyone was having a good time apparently. Shaughnessy had a big sunny smile. No guile in it, a bit of a gom really. He held a glass of wine in one. O’Riordan had the hat right, just like Vincent O’Brien, as he held the bridle on the racehorse. Leopardstown, a big race in the calendar the Prime Foods Cup for four-year-olds. Shaughnessy was in profile there. Two women, one of them O’Riordan’s age. A trainer, by the look of him, up front with O’Riordan too.
The inspector sipped his tea and looked down the timetable on the board. Murtagh had updated the map with pins for Shaughnessy’s Dublin dates too.
Murtagh pointed at a group standing in front of a doorway.
“That one there,” he said. “That’s at an auction in Goff’s. The fella on the left is a Saudi Arabian prince. Can you tell? Ha ha.”
O’Riordan was beaming at the Saudi prince. Minogue studied the camera slung over Shaughnessy’s shoulder. A sleek-looking model, couldn’t tell the make.
“An art exhibition,” said Murtagh. He capped the photo four times with his finger. “Kind of hoi-polloi there. It was Donohoe took those two. They’re in the papers last Sunday week. That’s Shaughnessy talking to some art dude. Film people showed up. Julia Whatshername was supposed to show but she didn’t.”
“Tough,” said Malone. “Pops up a lot, doesn’t he. How’d he get his intros?”
Murtagh shrugged.
“Connected through O’Riordan? He’s keen on the socialite bit.”
Fergal Sheehy arrived. Murtagh held up his mug. Sheehy sidled over to Eilis and said something out of the side of his mouth. She scowled and tapped the photocopy bundle one more time, hard. She began dropping the copies on the table.
“Eimear,” said Minogue. “I know you’d like to get home. Start us off will you?”
Minogue checked his list in his notebook. Blood from the bootlid typed the same as Shaughnessy’s. No receipts on the floor of the car. Fine particles from the seat covers in the front not yet matched to belongings found in the car. Nine fags in the ashtray lipstick traces plain on at least four. Tests? A week at least.
“Eimear,” said Minogue. “The inventory from the boot again. Have ye tried all the clothes for fiber matches?”
“All the jackets. Yes.”
There were signs of someone’s efforts to wipe prints? Lab staff had lasered the seats for latent prints and had found plenty. The comparisons were started already.
“The hairs you’re talking about,” said Murtagh. “Emerald gave me a list of customers they’d rented the Escort to. The car’s only six months old. There’s a total of eleven separate contracts on it, all of them tourists. Holland, the States. Germany. Some of the staff at Emerald are allowed to take the cars home too. And there’s delivery drivers and cleaners too.”
Minogue read down the inventory again. Michelin was misspelled.
“So far the wallet and the passport,” he said. “Camera, video camera — did he declare stuff on arrival?”
Murtagh shook his head.
“Nothing, but it’ll take a final search tomorrow at Customs to make sure.”
“Any start on a Bord Failte office, John? Visitor’s books?”
Murtagh bit his lip and scribbled on his notepad.
“I’ll start right after. Slipped my mind.”
“He wasn’t packing much for a jet-setter,” said Malone. “Four shirts, including what he had on when he was killed. Jeans, two other pairs of pants. Shoes, well three pairs.”
There was no booze in the car. Shaughnessy smoked. There were wrappers from bars of chocolate, two empty Pepsi cans, fragments of crisps, apple cores. They found paper hankies, the inside of an Irish Times. He studied the list of books and maps again. Two all-Ireland road maps but no marks on them. An ordinance survey for Donegal with a stamp on it from a shop in Donegal town. Life in Early Ireland by Professor Sean O’Tuama. Hardly meant drunken nightclub louts wavering in the middle of the street at 3 A.M.
A Bord Failte accommodations book had been folded open at Donegal. There were two national monuments and sites books. Minogue had spotted one of the titles browsing in the Official Publications office on Molesworth Street himself and wondered if anybody ever bought them. Land and People in Early Christian Ireland. A dictionary of Irish place-names. Had Shaughnessy written postcards? Minogue blew his nose as quietly as he could.
“Eimear,” he said then. “Are ye finished with the books? Prints, I mean ”
She told him they’d need another day at least to fluoroscope all the books. He’d loved Ireland, the mother had said; had thought of moving here.
“Ah ye’re great, Eimear,” he said. “Now I know it’s early, but maybe ye had something on placing the car at all? Those plastic shopping bags in the boot?”
They were generic to the shopping chain all over the country.
“Shit,” said Malone.
She’d already sent one receipt found in a bag to a man in the head office of Powers supermarkets to locate the shop. It was dated for two weeks ago.
Minogue leafed through the shots of the boot again.
“The damage to the car — John, did you phone Emerald on that?”
“I did. It’s news to them. They have no record from previous rentals.”
“What broke the panel over the spare wheel? Because he traveled light…?”
Sheehy cleared his throat.
“I’d be thinking I put the two things on the same line. The bang on the bottom of the car and the broken panel there over the spare wheel.”
“What,” said Malone. “You mean a big load in the back, and that broke it?”
“Going over a good-sized bump, and you with a load in the back, sure you’d give it a right good belt, so you would.”
“A boreen, are you saying, Fergal?”
“I am. And if you didn’t know the road. And if it was nighttime…”
“And if you were pissed,” said Malone.
Murtagh tapped on his watch. It was three minutes to six. Minogue nodded.
Murtagh rose and wheeled in Kilmartin’s Trinitron. Minogue asked Eimear about the hair from the comb. He received approximately the answer he expected. It was pretty well useless until more hair from the same person was had. Minogue thanked her. Did she want to hang around and see whatever they’d put in from the press conference? She declined and asked for squad autographs instead. Malone told her about the Works stuck at the airport, the autograph for his ma. Sheehy offered her an overused Northsider joke about a marriage proposal. Eimear Kelly, a champion middle-distance runner for Dublin, starting with her primary school days in Finglas, asked Sheehy if Kerry people had learned to cook their food yet. Malone opined that he’d heard Kerry people hadn’t even finessed it to killing their food before they started chewing it.
Sheehy affected to be stoical and even gently sage about Dubliners. He stroked his lip, sighed, and started on the airport details. There were twenty-something — wait, twenty-three — vehicles still in the car park checked in the same time or before Shaughnessy’s. There was no way to pin Shaughnessy’s car to a time until all the others had been claimed.
