“You must be some class of a fish then. Or a seal maybe.”
“Above Ballyvaughan, I — ”
“- There’s nothing above Ballyvaughan. Except for stones. Clouds maybe.”
“And well I know it, ma’am, from trying to coax — ”
“You’re not trying to cod me, now, are you?”
“Not a bit of it. Is your son expected home soon?”
“There was a Dan Minogue in Foreign Affairs. Are you one of his maybe?”
A headache had dulled his thinking, gutted most of his patience.
“We’re better known as the Murder Squad. But for now I’m merely — ”
“Murder? What murder? Is Sean all right?”
“Sorry, ma’am. Of course he is. It’s a different matter entirely.”
“Well God in heaven, man, you put the heart crossways in me!”
“I didn’t have the chance — ”
“All you had to do was open your mouth, sure.”
“I really need to talk to Sean, ma’am. Could I trouble you to direct me to him, as promptly now as I can ask, without giving offense.”
“He must be a cousin then,” she said. “Dan. Very direct but always civil. The nicest man you could meet. Oh, charm the birds off the trees. A real favorite with the lassies, so he was. This was during the Emergency of course.”
Minogue let out the deep breath he had been holding. He slouched in the chair and surveyed the squad room. His eyes settled on the newspaper article about Iseult.
“ DeValera, God be too good to him,” she went on, “he put a lot on Dan’s shoulders. Churchill summoned him to Downing Street in ’41. Our neutrality was an act of war to the likes of Churchill. Of course he hated anything Irish — hated it. Dev knew he’d picked the right man in Dan, of course: with the charm came the iron. Oh I can tell you it was not business as usual for Mr. Churchill that morning!”
“When would he be expected home?”
“ ‘Mr. Churchill,’ says Dan, with that lovely soft Clare accent, ‘Mr. Churchill. We feel for the plight of your people and the free peoples of Europe. We know what it is to lose our freedom, so we need ask no lessons in tyranny or freedom from you’ — ”
“Mrs. Garland, I have to ask you again if you would put me in touch with your son as soon as — ”
“‘Understand that we too have beaches, Mr. Prime Minister.’ And as if that wasn’t enough, he looks the old bulldog in the eye, without batting an eyelid: ‘Speaking for my own family, Mr. Prime Minister, I am from the west of Ireland. My uncle was shot dead in 1920 by Black and Tans. He was a farmer with fifteen acres. Now, with all the might and force you could muster to invade my country, you would still have to cross the Shannon to the west of Ireland. And there’ — ”
“Indeed, ma’am. I — ”
“Whist, will you! ‘And there,’ says Dan, ‘there you’d meet me and my family’ Never entered the minutes, needless to say Churchill almost threw a decanter at him, so he did. Oul toper, God forgive him. Hated Ireland, always. You’d be proud to claim relation with the likes of Dan Minogue! A huge funeral… ”
“I must commend you on your memory.”
“Hah,” she scoffed. “Patronizing a woman of fourscore years. I worked for Dev for thirty years. Now, that was long before the corner boys and counter jumpers insinuated themselves, you’ll understand. Long before the sloothering and shuttling off to Brussels and Strasbourg and the like, olagoning for grants and favors and handouts. Begging to be let sit with the fat boys over there, with their shiny suits and their sleek — ”
“Mrs Garland, please I don’t want to waste the resources of the Gardai sending out Guards to find him.”
Mrs. Garland said nothing. Minogue listened harder to the rustling sounds.
“Hello?”
“Don’t be interrupting me! I’m checking his appointments here.”
Minogue looked across at Murtagh. He was on hold on another call. He grinned wearily and shook his head. He heard Mrs. Garland whisper, pages turning.
“Now… Here we are. Yesterday was… Wait… What kind of people are we?”
“Pardon?”
“Set-aside, do you know about that?”
“I do, ma’am.”
“Do you now. We have farmers paid by the paper boys in Brussels not to grow anything. And a lot of them spray the fields to prove they can’t put in a crop there so’s they’ll get the grants. Poison, man — rank poison! Can you credit that? With everything we have, someone in Brussels tells Irish farmers to set aside land, a thing we fought and died for — even to poison it — and we do it? Sure land means nothing anymore. What have we turned into, answer me that. With the year of our lord two thousand bearing down on us… We might as well call ourselves a new name. Euroworms or something. Is that the way to start the next thousand years, is it?”
“Hardly.”
“Here we are now. Sean is at one of his regular things. They go to a restaurant below the back of Merrion Street there. Do you like Gilbert and Sullivan?”
“Which place, ma’am?”
“L’Avenue.”
“He’s at a function there is it?”
“He’s eating his dinner there. They go off to a pub afterward. Tuohy’s. Do you know Tuohy’s’ Do you know what they did to it?”
An ex-football player had lavished a million and something pounds to disassemble a country pub and reassemble it, board by board, in the middle of Dublin. Minogue gave her no chance to start in on it.
“Thank you, Mrs. Garland. I do. Here’s a number for me if I should miss him. If he phones, would you be kind and tell him that I’m leaving this minute to find him, ma’am?”
Minogue threw more water on his face. Still his eyeballs ached. He studied the droplets falling from his nose into the sink. The sneezing hadn’t yet proved a cold was here. Maybe it was working its way express and stealthily to his chest though.
Malone was waiting for him by the door. He had phoned L’Avenue, gotten to speak to Garland. Garland had told him he’d wait for them there. He nodded at Murtagh hunched over his desk.
“John’s gotten ahold of the sister. The Hartnett woman’s, like.”
Minogue took an extension and listened. Fiona Nolan was close to hysterical. Murtagh asked if she could give the key to a Guard and they’d let themselves in. Caught between panic and suspicion, Fiona Nolan said she’d have to discuss it with her hubbie.
Murtagh kicked off against the desk. He rolled no more than a foot.
“She’s freaking out, boss,” he whispered.
“Get her husband to bring the key then.”
“See what she — Yes. Mr. Nolan? Yes Garda John Murtagh, attached to the Technical Bureau.”
Nolan asked if there was an investigation in which his sister-in-law figured. Murtagh rolled his eyes, gave Minogue a look and pointed at the phone. “Can’t,” Minogue mouthed. He put down the extension. He heard Murtagh begin to explain to Nolan as he headed for the door.
Malone took Thomas Street. He drove directly through the Coombe to Kevin Street where they met with the last of rush hour. He said L’Avenue several times, trying out different inflections each time.
“It’s oo, Tommy. Not jew ”
“Lava-noo.”
“You’re close ”
“Doesn’t sound right. Sounds like Lava Noo. Who learned you your French anyhow?”
“Nobody. I picked it up.”
“Garland’s gay, I betcha.”
“Why?”
“He lives with his ma.”
