“Are those your wellies there?” he asked Malone.
“I don’t have any shagging wellies. Wellies are for culchies.”
“Is that your considered opinion?” Sheehy asked. “You’re an iijit then.”
“What else did your wife’s latest fella tell you after that?”
Sheehy pushed Minogue’s overnight further back in the boot. The car stank of cigars. Sheehy, smoking after winners, Minogue wondered. He turned down the radio. Sheehy closed the boot lid with a massive slam. Malone sat in.
“What’s the matter with him?” he asked
“We’re going down the country,” Minogue said. “He’s not.”
Minogue tugged out his seat belt. Sheehy sat in heavily behind the wheel.
Minogue still believed that the sergeant took grim satisfaction in being given the headbanger parts of an investigation.
“I hope you’re not after breaking our duty free,” Malone called out.
Sheehy cocked an eye at him.
“Take me drunk lads, I’m home,” said Malone.
Sheehy crunched reverse twice before finding it. The suspension bottomed out when he sped out the gate onto the North Circular Road.
“Well shag this,” said Malone. “I’m walking.”
“Some day’s work this’ll be,” Sheehy grunted, “if this is how it’s starting.”
“The airport follow-ups,” said Minogue.
“The passenger lists,” said Sheehy. “The car park. The lookouts for stuff being fenced. Trying to trace your man’s camera and such. But that’s only the half of it.”
Minogue flicked at the zipper handle on his briefcase. Had he reminded Murtagh to phone again, see if the bank cards had showed up active yet?
“Setting up to work on Aoife Hartnett, is it?”
“God, no,” Sheehy grunted. “That’s police work That I don’t mind.”
He accelerated around a bread van through the amber light at Cabra Road.
“Ferrying you and Head-the-Ball out to fly off to Mayo, now that’s work.”
“Hey, Fergal, me oul son,” Malone broke in “Does there be a lot of muck and stuff out there? Down the country like. I don’t want to get me new Nikes dirty.”
Sheehy didn’t take the bait. He worked his way through Glasnevin and turned down Griffith Avenue. Minogue tried to pin a name on the jig that Sheehy’d began whistling. Sheehy produced a cigar at the lights by Swords Road. Minogue rolled down his window. Sheehy affected not to notice. The air was damp, with an edge to it.
“Knock International, is it?” he asked.
“That’s it. Look, Fergal. We were only codding about the duty free.”
“Ah, well that’s all right, so.”
“We’re on expenses,” said Malone. “We don’t need the duty free, like.”
Sheehy shook his head and settled into top gear for the start of the motorway.
“See how cocky you are after falling around the place there a few hours,” he said around the cigar. “In the bog. In the pissings of rain. You jackeen.”
Minogue allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation about whether Mayo was wetter than Clare. Sheehy maintained that Dublin people were climatically deprived. Malone offered that Sheehy hadn’t been crouched in a tent with the wind howling and the rain lashing the other night. Sheehy offered to exchange places with Malone on the trip to Mayo. Malone replied that he had finally been convinced that country people were far better educated than Dubs so the file work and searches would be best left to them. So, no.
Minogue tuned out more often. He thought about the Carra Fields and the bog roads around them. Five thousand years ago, Garland had told him, but it had returned to bogland by the time of the Bronze Age. With the forests down, the rain had leeched away the soil in no time at all.
“ Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmad…”* he murmured. * “Kilcais ” (Kill-cash), a poem written anonymously in the early 1700s, was a staple of school learning until very recently. It laments the destruction both of Ireland’s native forests and nobles’ houses such as Kilcais. It became generalized as a somber comment on the loss of the past and its treasures.
What shall we do for timber?
The last of the woods is down
Kilcais and the house of its glory,
The spot where that lady waited
Who shamed all women for grace
When earls came sailing to greet her
And Mass was said in the place.
Sheehy cocked an ear. There was warmth in his voice now.
“ Ta deireadh na gcoillte ar lar,
Nil tracht ar Kilcais na a theaghlach… I forget the last line.”
“ S’ni cluinfear a chluin go brach,” Minogue said. “You’re good, Fergal.”
“I bet you went through the Christian Brothers.”
“It was a truce mostly, as I recall,” Minogue said.
Traffic by the airport roundabout was light. Minogue studied the faces in the tour bus that had pulled over. American, he guessed. A maple leaf on the front window told him otherwise. Hard to tell. He looked over the fountain at the hangars on the north apron.
Sheehy was waved through the checkpoint. He pulled up by the taxi rank. Minogue blew his nose again and stepped out. Malone was pulling the bags out of the boot. A jet engine was warming up somewhere.
Sheehy looked around the roadway as though he had dropped money on it. Tired, Minogue knew, chasing leads all evening and another twelve hours of it ahead of him.
“Back tonight, do you think?” Sheehy asked.
“Might be, Fergal. Are ye all right?”
“Ah, we’re in good order. As well as starting up background on the woman, I’m going to go after the people in those photos today. Start in, anyhow. See if Shaughnessy told anyone anything about what was on his mind.”
“Good, Fergal. The calls might come better today too.”
“They better. There’s nothing.”
“He’ll show up. So will she.”
Sheehy looked over at Malone holding the door with his knee as he dragged the bags into the building.
“Seems to me now they were keen not to be noticed,” he said. “I mean, people down the country don’t miss much.”
Minogue nodded.
“Good man yourself. And you stuck in Dublin, Fergal.”
“Deliberate,” said Sheehy. “Some class of planning went on. But that’s for you to be thinking about.”
Malone had his head glued to the window most of the time. There was low cloud coverage soon after Dublin but there were gaps. The constant noise bothered him more than the vibration. Why hadn’t he brought a flask of coffee?
He looked out at the propellers again. Patches of land appeared through the clouds and were swiped away again. He checked his watch. They must be getting close now. An hour’s drive from the airport should do it, an hour and a half at most.
He remembered Caty’s disbelief when she and Daithi had returned to Dublin after their week in the west last year. Where were all the people out here, Caty wanted to know. Such a sense of isolation in such a small country. Et cetera… She had talked about the Famine over dinner in the new Chineser on George’s Street. “Romancing” was Kathleen’s predicable closer on Caty’s talk of a huge weight of something in the air — but a lovely girl. She’d really wake up Daithi, really liven him up.
The copilot leaned around the doorway.
