music. He’d ask the bland Freeman how long ago his boss had had the heart surgery. Interesting to see if Freeman balked.
He slipped out of the Citroen, locked and alarmed it, and hot-footed it across to the door. He had forgotten the new dip in the tarmac left after last summer’s heat wave. He managed to splash right up to his chest and even flick drops on his chin. He was in the foyer using a lot of bad language when Malone found him.
“That’s desperate language. Who’re you hanging around with?”
“Get away from me. I should have stayed in the damned car and driven home, so I should.”
“Why don’t you, so?”
Minogue shook two pills into his palm.
“Because I’ve nothing to sleep on, that’s why.”
“Oh here we go. Are you the one preaching the Watch and Wait stuff at me awhile ago? The black art and the Zen thing? ‘The devil’s in the detail, Tommy’?”
“I could have said anything by closing time in Willie Ryan’s.”
Malone followed him to the kitchen. Minogue half-filled a mug with water.
“We’re firmed up on Donegal, at least,” said Malone. “Those two places he stayed. One of the statements is in already. They have Guards doing the rounds in the pubs to ferret out more tonight.”
Minogue let the water wash the pills off the back of his tongue. He stared at the chipped enamel by the front of the cooker.
“What’s the link between the places he stayed?”
“Who knows,” Malone said “Except they’re B amp; Bs, not the Hilton.”
“If we could find her car,” Minogue muttered. He drank the rest of the water and turned to Malone.
“We’d be clued in as to whether our man was acting the maggot. Prior intentions, plan. He must have said something to someone ‘Touring the west’?”
Malone leaned against the countertop and stretched his neck. Minogue heard a crack.
“She drove somewhere to meet him,” Malone said. “That’s where her car is.”
Minogue’s eyes felt like bruises now. Even when he closed them, they felt they might pop out and roll down his cheeks. The flu maybe?
“Hey, boss. Go home. We’re all right.”
“Phone Fergal at the airport again, Tommy. We really have to get a time — a day even — for the love of God.”
Minogue trudged back down the hall to the squad room. The splashes on his trousers made the fabric cold and gritty on his skin. He rubbed his toes around and felt the itchy slip of wet socks. He stood in front of the boards.
Shaughnessy had started in Donegal, that’s how it looked. He’d spent at least a day there. He’d been with Aoife Hartnett. They’d been in her car. Why? He wasn’t scrimping: he was keeping his head down, out of sight. Shaughnessy had, as Minogue had heard so many times in the dry language of the books of evidence being quoted in court, formed an intent. He imagined him sitting in the Micra while Aoife Hartnett did the dealings’ buying petrol, meals, booking a room.
He squinted at the map and let the names slide around in his mind. Ardara, Falcarragh, Gortahork; the Glengesh pass down into Glencolumbkille. Up again along that mountain road, out to Killybegs, and on to Donegal town. Down by Bundoran the marker’s blue line went, through Sligo, and out to Collooney where it stopped by the question mark. He took the marker and uncapped it. He found Ballina and then the village of Cahercarraig. He drew the dotted line slowly and put his initials by the question mark.
John Murtagh yawned loud and long. He stood and groaned and stretched and groaned again and ambled over to Minogue
“The guidebooks, you’re thinking,” said Murtagh. “Aren’t you?”
“The crease on the page for Cahercarraig, John, yes. Right by these fields they’re going to open up. The Carra Fields ”
“And the interpretive center thing, right. She’s the boss — ”
Minogue’s sneeze caused Murtagh to take a step back.
Murtagh was still poring over the list when Minogue finished blowing his nose. The phones had been silent for half an hour. Murtagh pointed at the eight-by-ten of the group at the museum party.
“She’s the head honcho on that place, right?”
“The photo there, John. Yes. The unveiling of the exhibition.”
“What else is marked in that guidebook from the car?”
“Just Glencolumbkille.”
“Nothing for Mayo?”
Minogue shook his head. He stepped over to the photos. Wine glasses, panels with pictures and columns of words behind the group. Aoife Hartnett. a fairly public smile, if he had to find a word for it. Shaughnessy standing off to the side. Garland mightn’t have realized who he was if it had been a big enough do.
Murtagh was back at the map with his finger in Mayo.
“Cahercarraig then,” he said “Five or six miles?”
“About that, John. Is it time we got our hardworking colleagues in County Mayo out on the roads too?”
“You were promised the world, I heard,” Murtagh said.
Minogue looked over at Pat Curran, the lone remaining Guard on the call-in line. Curran had turned out to be a rower. Minogue had forgotten which Garda rowing team had gotten into a drinking spree at the Garda Boat Club two years ago and started throwing one another into the river.
“Thanks, Pat,” he called out. “Go home, like a good man. We’ll call you for follow-ups if we get inundated here.”
Curran smiled and nodded. He stared at the phones for several moments as though to reproach them for not ringing. Then he rolled back from the table.
“John,” said Minogue. “We can’t sit on our hands waiting. You’ll make the call to Galway. I’ll call Mayo.”
“Feed them the Micra, and this monument stuff too? Vague, isn’t it?”
“The car for sure then. And tell them there’ll be overnight faxes on Aoife Hartnett. Call us if they haven’t received them by ten tomorrow morning ”
Murtagh exchanged a look with the inspector.
“He or she, he and she, went on west to Mayo,” Minogue muttered. “Every member, patrol schedule or not, has to have her picture and the details and Shaughnessy’s too in their fists by dinnertime tomorrow.”
He looked away from the map again. Murtagh hadn’t moved.
“Go on with you, John Murtagh, and don’t be looking at me like that. I know it’s nine o’clock at night. We would have moved to an active search soon enough anyway. Any duty officers humming or hawing, or bellyaching, refer them to me.”
Minogue used Kilmartin’s office to phone Tynan. He hung up when the voice mail took over and dialed the cell phone number. O’Leary answered. He had dropped the commissioner home an hour ago. Did Minogue have the home number? Minogue pretended he didn’t.
He was too bewildered to frame a witty reply to Rachel Tynan when she said his name.
“He said you might call.”
Minogue heard music grow louder, a door close.
“Quite the statement,” she said. “Did it surprise you?”
“The, er, case I’m on is it, er, Rachel?”
“The Holy Family. I really like it.”
“Thanks — I mean I’ll tell her ”
“Had you seen it before?”
Tynan broke in on the extension.
“- Well be sure to tell her,” said Rachel Tynan “Don’t forget, now.”
He told her he would. He didn’t know if he was fibbing.
“Excuse the hour, John.”
“No bother. What’s the news.”
“Nothing stirring from the appeal yet.”
