“You were living at home until not too long ago.”
“That’s different. That was on account of the brother.”
Minogue answered Murtagh’s call as Malone drew up in front of the laneway. He eyed the painted sign for L’Avenue high up on the wall.
Nolan, the brother-in-law, was willing to let them into Aoife Hartnett’s place, but only in an hour.
“What,” said Minogue. “After he’s been through it?”
“I suppose,” said Murtagh.
“Tell him to smarten up, John. We’re not across from one another in court.”
“I leveled with him. He’s worried. He’ll come around quick enough.”
Malone turned into the laneway. There was an interior design place, a cake shop with a Russian-sounding name, an architect’s office that looked like some of Daithi’s Legos from twenty years gone by.
“There’s nowhere to park,” said Malone. “I’ll park back out by the bank.” L’Avenue was half full. There were skylights, vines that looked real, wrought iron dividers. Garland was sitting with two men and a woman. One of the men looked familiar. He had the guarded expression of someone who’s well known. Minogue couldn’t place him.
“I’ll come quietly,” Garland said.
Minogue managed a brief smile in return. The size of the head on this fella, he thought. And why did he remind him of a pigeon? The giant’s head, the ruddy face over swelling wattles, and a spotted bow tie stole Minogue’s attention for several moments. On the end of his short arms were fingers like sausages. Minogue made an effort to keep his eyes on Garland’s face.
The others at the table returned the inspector’s nod. The woman smiled. Garland grasped his jacket. He eyed the inspector.
“God, your timing is perfect. Inspector?”
“Matt.”
“A close call entirely. — Colm here was about to extort more wine from us.”
Garland must have told them there’d be a Guard coming to call. Glamorous, no doubt, a whiff of danger, something to tell their cronies about.
“Oh yes,” Garland went on. “He was getting ready to explain the subtexts in A Rebel Hand.”
That’s who the Colm was’ Colm Tierney, newspaper columnist, prognosticator. Minogue’s nose began to tickle. He searched his coat pocket for hankies but he couldn’t find any.
He knew the surge of irritation wasn’t just from having a cold coming on. There was something about these people here that annoyed him. Crank he was, and prejudiced. He knew it, and he felt badly about it, but he knew that wouldn’t alter much of his impressions later.
“Colm’s the man, I don’t know if you’re aware of it now… ”
Garland waited for Minogue to blow his nose.
“Well Colm broke the news that Ireland had disappeared several years ago. ‘The man who lost Ireland,’ we call him ”
Tierney’s lips pursed. The smile, or whatever it was supposed to become, never made it He looked down instead at the glass he was turning on the cloth.
“I keep on finding it,” said Garland. “But he doesn’t believe me! He’s our resident postmodernist — here, did anyone hear the one where some scientist crossed a Mafia boss with a postmodernist?”
Malone had entered the restaurant. He spotted Minogue and made his way over. Minogue finished blowing his nose and glanced at Garland. He’d caught a bit of the punch line, something about an offer you couldn’t understand.
“Can we chat here at one of the empty tables?”
A waitress followed the three. Minogue asked if the coffee was fresh. He gave Garland the once-over again.
“It’s like I was saying to you on the phone, Dr. Garland,” he began.
“Sean. Please.”
“Sean. We’re trying to locate Ms.. Hartnett. We need her help in our inquires.”
Garland looked from Minogue to Malone and back.
“She’s gone to Portugal. That’s what I know at the moment.”
“Did she tell you anything about the hows and wheres of her trip?”
“Well, in a word, no. She has oodles of overtime built up, so — well, she did mention to me that she’d found a seat-sale thing…”
“Did she give a name, a destination?”
Garland’s frown changed his face completely.
“No,” he said after several moments’ thought. “She’d be just notifying me as a courtesy now, not asking me. We’re civil servants and all, but it’s more like a, well, a crowd of academics really. Aoife’d decide on leave and such, like.”
“Traveling on her own?” Minogue tried.
“Well now. I really don’t know.”
“‘I’m going to Portugal’ or ‘We’re going to Portugal’?”
Garland scratched under his chm.
“No, no,” he said slowly. “I’m afraid not. No… Now, is this connected with this American that you were looking for, the man who was found the other day?”
Minogue nodded. The coffee arrived in a small cup. He glanced up at the waitress. Was there something else, she asked. A bigger cup, a lot less jazz on the speakers, windows. A pint; at home with a book. He smiled and shook his head.
“Now I’m worried,” said Garland. “What can I do here, what can we do?”
“Sorry, Mr. Garland. Sean. We’ve been in touch with others about Ms. Hartnett’s whereabouts. She has or had a sometimes boyfriend, and a sister here in Dublin. The sister thought she was going with a gang from work, a girls’ week type of thing. That’s what she told her. So here we are. Do you and she work together on a daily basis, now?”
Garland’s frown deepened.
“No, not every day at all,” he said. “But we’d be bumping into one another pretty well every day. Aoife headed up project teams with the OPW. We have regular meetings and consultations. Now, it’s very informal too, of course.”
“The Office of Public Works, is it?”
“Yes, sorry. We work very closely with their Historic Properties section there. That’s their National Monuments Department.”
“The last time being…?”
“Thursday, I think — yes, Thursday. I thought back after you phoned. I left the office at lunchtime. She was going off to lunch as well. Aoife had been meeting with people to do with an interpretive center.”
He glanced down at Minogue’s notebook.
“After one,” he added. “I remember. ‘How”d it go,’ I asked her ‘Great,’ she said.”
“She left alone?”
“So far as I know yes. I was talking to someone. Des McNally, yes. Out in the hall by the stairs, and she went by.”
Minogue wrote two ls for McNally.
“We do be flexible in this environment,” said Garland. “Everyone works hard. There’d be stress at certain times, of course, like any other…”
He returned Minogue’s skeptical gaze. Then he gave a short laugh.
“Stress you’re thinking — in a museum? Not like your work now, but…”
The missed sleep, the late-night calls, Minogue thought. The hunkering over a corpse, for hours sometimes, the ever new bafflement and disgust, the moment of truth for families and lovers.
“Ms.. Hartnett’s in a high-pressure job, do you mean?”
“Well no, not exactly. She’s an assistant curator. She has responsibilities for several key parts of heritage. There’s an awful lot going on these days.”
