where. The thirty thousand was to tell people they’d be well paid to turn in things rather than be conniving or just breaking things up and selling them. And nowadays any fella in off the street can buy any number of electronic gadgets.”
“Like what?” from Malone.
“Metal detectors — curse of God on them. Well I remember the meetings we used to have back in the early ’70s, when we got the first of the satellite images and we had a bit of money to do the aerial surveys. Oh, you’d laugh — or cry, maybe.”
Garland looked over his shoulder at the group he had left.
“It was Hobson’s choice there,” he said. “We had to decide back then if we should even be making public the digs and the finds until after we had the sites set up and secured.”
Minogue had a second after the tickle before the sneeze erupted. When he finished blowing his nose he looked up to find Garland staring at him.
“Tell you what I can do,” Garland said. The fingers, so short that the inspector couldn’t stop staring at them, were tugging, poking under Garland’s chin. “Come around to the office with me. I’ll see if there’s anything lying around there that’d give us any help.”
CHAPTER 1O
Garland wheezed as he walked down the lane to the car. His gait reminded Minogue of a hen walking ahead of a vehicle trying to get into the farmyard. The inspector slowed.
“It’ll be me looking through her appointment diary,” Garland said. “More than that, I’d have to get advice on.”
Minogue took in the flushed face, the chest rising and falling.
“You can see the situation, now, can’t you?”
“Fair enough.”
Malone drove around the green and down Dawson Street. He asked Garland about the mummies. Everyone wanted to know about the mummies and when they’d be back. Not a day went by without someone asking after them. What about the bog man, Malone asked then, the one that looked like a shoe. And the bloodstained tunics from the 1916 Rising, were they out being cleaned or something? Minogue almost smiled. Malone, like thousands of people probably, wanted these grisly, tatty, extravagant relics, the meat and potatoes of childhood visits to the museum, back on show. Garland sidestepped Malone’s inquiries. He began talking about regional museums, sites, interpretive centers, restoration. Minogue eyed the group of young men drinking cans of something by the Kilkenny Design shop.
Garland told them that Viking Dublin was unexpectedly popular now. There was an interactive exhibit on Swift’s Dublin being set up too.
“What, we’d get to talk to him,” said Malone. “Have a pint with him?”
Two Guards on duty by the gates to Leinster House eyed them as they passed.
“Virtually,” Garland said. “Go around by the car park here. The staff door.”
Minogue eased his way out of the Nissan. A Guard who had been sitting in a squad car closer to the Shelbourne stepped out. Minogue met him halfway The Guard looked over the photocard and then nodded at Malone. Minogue had forgotten who the statue was that they passed in the middle of the car park. A quartz streetlamp began to buzz and glow dimly by the corner of Molesworth Street.
Garland was having trouble finding his key. Minogue looked up to the camera over the door. Garland huffed and puffed, said damn, keyed in. A security guard met them inside the glass cubicle. Garland helloed him and signed in.
“Anybody above, Kevin?”
The security guard had long hair.
“Studio lad I think.”
Garland led the two detectives down a hall to a staircase. Minogue pinched the bridge of his nose but he couldn’t clear it. He glanced at the names on the doors, the titles: resource outreach coordinator, curators, field facilities.
“Where do you keep the mummies now?” Malone wanted to know. Minogue heard Garland’s wheezes.
“Ah that’d be telling. Let’s say they’re under wraps for now.”
A door opened on to a newly decorated foyer. It was gray with bottle-green signs, its lights hidden under a plinth by the ceiling. Garland opened a door that led into a large wmdowless room lit only by three security lights set into the ceiling. Moveable partitions ran the length of the room.
Minogue took in the computers in each cubicle. Postcards from Thailand and Donegal and New York, Israel, those rock-cleft palaces in Jordan. He slowed to eye a poster for the Carra Fields. Why the hell leave it black and white with masses of clouds looming overhead? Lugubrious, mystical Celt guff. Of course, that was it. the writing on the bottom was German. Calculated, marketed: smart.
Garland and Malone were waiting for him by one of three doors. Garland tugged at his ear. Dr. Aoife Hartnett (Litt M, MBA). Minogue tried to figure out the number of years that had taken.
“Tell you what,” said Garland “Let me just go into the studio and ask them if Aoife’s checked in since. Come in and have a look if you want.”
The third door: multimedia. That was something to do with computers. The hum from it was music. There were cartoons on the door about engineers, computers with faces, a Murphy’s law, a caveman with a laptop under his arm.
The man facing the computer screen turned in his chair and pushed it back on its rollers. He didn’t stand.
“Dermot,” said Garland “You’re the night owl entirely.”
Minogue nodded at him.
“Dermot Higgins,” said Garland. He had to ask Malone’s name before introducing him.
Minogue registered the stubble, the cropped hair, the T-shirt of a fake Egyptian fresco with microchips among the figures. If he’d tidy up the face, his dark looks would fit handily on a paperback cover: a hero, the shirt in flitters and lathered in sweat, carrying your basic swooning, busty heroine away from a burning castle.
Minogue’s eyes strayed to the monitor. The screen filled with fog and slowly cleared to reveal a map of Ireland. Small pictures the size of postage stamps surfaced from the map and began to glow and pulsate.
“Any word from Aoife there, Dermot?” Garland asked.
Higgins shook his head
“No,” he said. “Haven’t heard since she went, er…?”
“It’s okay,” Garland said. “They know she’s on a holiday.” He turned to the two detectives
“Bet you don’t know what this is, on the screen.”
Malone leaned in to study the screen.
“The Carra Fields,” said Minogue
“Well, full marks to you, Insp — Matt.”
Higgins clicked a mouse on one of the small pictures glowing in Mayo.
“You click on the site,” said Higgins. “And — wait a minute. I’ll get the sound up properly.”
He tugged a set of headphones from a socket by a set of speakers and flicked buttons on what looked to Minogue to be a small stereo. The crack and rumble from the sound system startled him.
A bodhran drummed vigorously, like a tattoo for battle before an orchestral background flooded in. Synthesizer, Minogue wondered. The screen dissolved and re-formed as a picture of an ancient village. Sounds of hammering and sharpening, birdsong, and distant voices began to take over. Work and daily life — that must be the idea. The picture faded and was replaced by another, this one of what looked like a family in an old house, gathered around a fire.
The voice-over, a woman, spoke in the present tense. “Greece is a collection of warring tribes yet,” she began. “In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians are beginning to use uniform language. The pharaohs’ tombs will not be built for two millennia yet. There are clan fights and bloodletting across Europe. In these Carra Fields live four
