“You’re concerned?”
“I am. I am that. It’s time to move. Let me cite your go-ahead for an active search in the western counties, starting tonight. The biggest they can mount. Overtime and leave canceled even.”
“Tonight? It can’t be in the morning?”
“Tonight. I’m the boss, remember?”
“There’s no sign of her beyond what you had earlier, is that it?”
“Nothing. We’re looking over lab results again, trying to pin anyone he seems to have had contact with here while he was in Dublin. The events he was seen at.”
“You can place him until when, again?”
“There’s not a sign after Sligo. The fine town of Colooney. I’m juggling the possibility that he dropped out of sight on purpose. At least he wanted to avoid being noticed. I’m thinking he went into Mayo. There’s the Carra Fields there. He might have had a particular interest in it. Aoife Hartnett is one of the nabobs on it.”
“This Carra Fields thing, this site. What exactly is it?”
Minogue looked at the badges in Kilmartin’s display. He hadn’t noticed the Arizona one. No doubt he’d be coming home with a half-dozen more.
“Well it’s by way of being an organized set of holes in the ground,” he began. “They’ve been at it for six or seven years. A few prefabs and the like. European money came through last year to build an interpretive center. A half-million quid with more later. New roads going in around the place to get the buses, et cetera, in.”
“A lost civilization in Mayo, then — or Ireland.”
“Maybe, John, I don’t know. I’m a stranger here myself.”
“You’d better explain that to me someday.”
“It’ll have to be in a pub.”
“Uh. Mayo — any word from our man in Boston?”
“Fame eludes him yet. Not a word. It must be a very intensive conference.”
“If he calls, tell him he’s doing great — keeping to himself, I mean.”
“He’ll get the hint I’m sure.”
“He’ll need to. They’ve thrown more into the stew, I’m afraid. Gemma O’Loughlin says she’ll definitely lead with that nonsense about hit squads in the Guards. The Larry Smith shooting. She’s got the Smith family all roused too.”
“She knows that we’re reviewing it? Purcell’s crowd is, I mean?”
“She thinks that’s just window dressing. ‘Smoke screen.’ I found this out an hour ago. I had an otherwise unremarkable chat with the editor.”
Minogue stared at the framed picture of James and Maura Kilmartin and their son at the boy’s graduation. The Killer’s eyes were set in deep, the brow lowered, even when he tried to smile. The son’s grin was a mix of bewilderment and relief. Kilmartin hadn’t once in their years of friendship let slip that he’d considered retiring to Mayo. “Stick it out in Dublin,” Minogue had heard almost daily from him.
“John. I’ve got to go. I’m going to phone Mayo Division and get a search of this Carra site first.”
Tynan hummed.
“The Escort got rough treatment somewhere,” Minogue said. “The underside of it had dings galore. Rocks and stones, I don’t know, but something banged a hole underneath, where the spare is.”
Minogue wondered why Tynan was keeping him. He heard a door close in Tynan’s house. Rachel Tynan, he wondered, or one of the security squad coming in for a leak. Tynan had insisted on the squad members using the kitchen and toilet when they needed, instead of sitting for hours in their cars manufacturing piles.
“Matt?”
“Yes…?”
“Smith… do you think it’s — No, no. Forget that. Yes — forget I said it.” Minogue stared at the badges again.
“All right, fine,” said Tynan then. “Issue it tonight. And make it public too with a release tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll phone you in the morning.”
CHAPTER 14
She had kept walking until the water reached her chin. He couldn’t catch up with her. Worse: he couldn’t make out what she was saying to him. The sea off Killiney was like glass, the surface dotted with the heads of swimmers. And no one on the beach or in the water seemed to notice that his daughter was trying to walk across the seabed of the Irish Sea in the general direction of Wales, toward the continent or even the coast of Africa.
Malone’s eyes were baggy. Maybe he’d had forty winks and didn’t realize it. He rubbed at his face. It felt blubbery. His nose was blocked solid again. He wanted to rest his head against the cabinet again, doze off. He shivered instead.
“Cuppa tea?”
“No. Thanks.”
He looked around the squad room. The screen saver on the computer irritated him. Why was it left on anyway? Kathleen had said that Iseult and Pat could have come out tonight. It wasn’t a conscious reproach, he knew, but her resigned good-night at ten felt like a dig: why, at your age, are you not delegating more so you can be at home in bed at a decent hour?
Two detective units from Castlebar and eight other Gardai were at the Carra Fields, walking around in the dark. It was lashing rain there. A Chief Inspector Noonan was continuing to have trouble with blackout areas on the walkie-talkies. Search teams had to relay messages to a farmhouse a mile from the site where there was a phone. Why not wait until morning, from Noonan. Minogue had prevaricated: it was a time thing; the squad would need to move quickly if they found the car there.
Malone stood and began stretching exercises.
“What’s the big deal,” he grunted. “It’s always pissing rain out there, isn’t it?”
Minogue didn’t answer.
“They have a map of the place, haven’t they?” Malone went on. “All they have to do is folley along any tracks you could get a car up. What do you call them, boreens? Couldn’t they get the lowdown from any watchman type of a fella there?”
Minogue rested his head on the panel of the cabinet and stared at the clock. It was Murtagh who had taped up the newspaper ad for the contest to design a new friendly logo for the Guards that kids could fall in love with. Teddy the Safety Bear. Garda Jim, the Friendly Giant. FIDO, the Garda mascot from rank-and-file entries.
“It’s all closed up, Tommy,” he murmured. “Since they finished their digging and called it a day there after Christmas.”
Malone rose from his toe-touching, his face flushed. He cracked his knuckles.
“What, before they got the money from Europe to build the place?”
Minogue wondered if he should phone Kilmartin in the morning. He always had the pretext of telling Kilmartin how the case was running: there are about three dozen very wet, very annoyed Guards here, Jim, with a dozen and more very bloody-annoyed Guards. What Malone could be whistling about at ten o’clock at night while he filled the kettle, Minogue couldn’t imagine. Couldn’t do it without a cup of something, but there was only instant coffee left.
The phone seemed unusually loud. Minogue picked up the extension on Murtagh’s desk. Noonan wasn’t irritated this time.
“Are you sure?” Minogue asked.
Noonan said he was. One of the Guards had actually gone down a part of the cliff to get a better look. They had a quartz searchlight from the car. Minogue stepped across to the boards and pulled the thumbtacks from the top of the site map. He spread it out on Murtagh’s desk.
“Sorry, er — ”
“Tom. Tell me, how’d you know it’d be there?”
