Exited apartment in car, 328 BMW convertible. Minogue closed the folder and stacked it on top of the other two. Malone examined his nails.
“We’re thinking he flew over on his own,” he said. “But maybe he’d arranged to meet someone.”
“Who?”
Malone looked over his fingers again.
“This Hartnett one. We could start in on whether he phoned her.”
“Say he knew her,” said Minogue. “Knew of her anyway. To do what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever screwed-up millionaire brats do. Hang around with cool people. ‘The scene’? There’s probably a southside thing over there in Boston too, wait’ll you see. Losers and bollockses on the south side — ”
“The usual hardworking salt-of-the-earth laboring men on the northside?”
“Exactly.” Malone nodded at the folders. “And we’re going to look for leads in this mountain of stuff? Huh. This is a screen, boss. It’s to buy time for something. What do you think, someone followed him here from the States to pop him here? Oh that’ll be great for us. Bleeding marvelous.”
Minogue stood and stretched. The longtime companion ache in his lower back was announcing itself clearly. He looked around the meeting room. He wouldn’t mind an office like this looking out onto Harcourt Street.
“He’s dirty, boss. Clattering women and that. A druggie. Come on, now.”
“Yes, Tommy.”
“Record or no record. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not out to nail him just because his oul lad’s loaded. Stuff doesn’t square up, yet anyhow. Look: he got clobbered for something here. Someone saw him in action, decided, well, here’s a hit: rich, stupid — pissed even. Maybe he dropped the hand on someone’s ’mot.”
“You don’t put much on any roots thing, do you?”
“What, the ancient Ireland stuff, all the glory?”
“Yes.”
Malone cracked his knuckles.
“Ah now…! Robbing and killing’s the main event, boss. It’s like Kilmartin says. Them’s the stats this past twenty-year here on the squad, right?”
Minogue began counting pigeons prowling the footpath below.
“Tell me what’s missing, that’s my approach,” said Malone “You want to bet he was carrying? Cash, I mean. Maybe the American Express routine. Yeah, don’t leave home without it — someone else’s like. Jases, boss, there’s hundreds of gougers walking the streets here who’d have a go at the likes of Shaughnessy if they thought they could get anything. Someone could be swimming in Margaritas on the Coasta Brava pretending to be Shaughnessy right now.”
Minogue turned back from the window. He lifted the folders. It’d be a couple of days at least before they’d have any track of someone using stolen cards in Shaughnessy’s name. A week even, if they were smart how they used them.
“Here, hard chaw,” he said to Malone “You carry them. We have other things to be thinking about at the present time.”
Minogue held the door open for Malone. The hallway was empty but the door to Tynan’s office was ajar. Minogue looked through the crack in the doorway.
“You’re off then,” Tynan called out. Minogue pushed the door open.
“We are. We have our bedside reading.”
Tynan looked over Minogue’s shoulder at Malone.
“You know what he’s after, don’t you?” he asked Minogue.
“I think so.”
“What about yourself, Detective Malone. Are you wised up?”
“Me ma says no. But she’ll always say that.”
Tynan pushed his Biro into his tunic pocket.
“John Leyne wants us to prepare for the worst,” he said. “Mrs. Shaughnessy would not be party to that last visit we just had. You know why, do you?”
Malone shifted the folders against his chest.
“She’d be in denial,” he said His voice had a tart edge to it.
Tynan nodded and looked up and down the hall.
“Did your ma ever tell you you should get on with your sergeant’s exams?”
“Yeah she did. Sir.”
“So are you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Too busy fighting crime. Sir.”
“Get a bigger stick then. Stripes, Garda Malone: we need you.”
“Another brick in the wall,” said Malone again.
He turned the Nissan off High Street. He managed to find the largest of a series of potholes first. Minogue listened for new hums and noises from the car.
“What wall?”
“Mr. Excitement Tynan. Throwing things at you out of the blue. His MO.”
“He wouldn’t prod you if he didn’t think you could handle it.”
“There’s a pair of you in it. ‘What about yourself, Detective Malone?’ Jases. ‘We need you.’ Is he gay or what?”
“I’ve seen him merry, Tommy.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You told me once that denial was a big river in Egypt.”
Malone stood on the brakes and swerved to avoid another pothole.
“Very funny, man. So very funny. I can be the gas-man Dub if you can hide behind being the Clare culchie.”
“I am a Clare culchie. Ask Kathleen. ”,
“You are on your bollocks. Am I blind or what? You and your shagging Magritte postcards all over the kip. Jases. The books — them snaps of those oul rocks there on the wall next to your desk.”
“They’re not oul rocks.”
“What are they so? Houses the Martians built on their last trip here?”
“You win, Tommy. How did you know?”
“No wonder Kilmartin does be looking over his shoulder. That frigging carry-on of yours.”
He knew the Nissan’s speed wasn’t a good gauge for Malone’s annoyance.
“We’re not going back to the Squad to be sitting and reading this stuff.”
“Do you hear me fighting?” asked Malone. “But we keep the head straight.”
“Aoife Hartnett, you’re telling me.”
“Right.”
“Do you think she’s hiding, Tommy?”
“No I don’t,” he said “I think she’s dead.”
The rain started in earnest at eight. It kept going until nearly nine when Minogue went out to the car park to retrieve a box of Anadin from the glove box of his Citroen. It wasn’t any one particular thing that had given him such a clanger. Not the call from Serious Crimes to tell him that so far their informants had come up dry on gang activity at the airport. Nor was it the call to Eimear at the lab to tell him that Shaughnessy had no booze in him, that the whiff Donavan had noted must have been decomposition effects.
He sat in the passenger seat and listened to the radio. He played with the fader and the balance and the presets and the idea of Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy as a killer. He stopped a search when he hit upon something orchestral. It turned out to be a rather stiff rendition of Handel. The rain on the sunroof had almost stopped now. He looked across the deserted car park. He imagined the gush from a nearby gutter was keeping time with the
