Minogue squinted at the words: the customs among the dreams, the tribal groups. Ransom perhaps, forced marriages, local wars. He yawned and slid back in the chair. He sat listening to the fridge and surveying the empty glass and the books and notes scattered on the table until he couldn’t take the pain from the chair back grinding into his shoulders anymore.
He closed and stacked the maps and folders, shoved them to the wall. He probably wouldn’t be able to sleep. He fought off the thought of another half-glass of whiskey. The list he’d made might look downright stupid in the morning. So what, he’d make time somehow. He wondered if Geraldine Shaughnessy was sleeping in her suite, wherever that suite was. Was her husband — her ex-husband — awake himself, in his hospital room.
He paused by the door and laid his hand on the light switch. And Aoife Hartnett coiled up in the water for days, that band around her neck where she’d been choked turning brown as the tissue decayed. Pieces of her torn and chewed by whatever lived at the bottom of the Carra Cliffs.
Kathleen grunted and swallowed as he lay next to her “Are you all right?”
Talking in her sleep. He clamped his eyelids shut. It wouldn’t be the first time he fibbed. “I am,” he said.
CHAPTER 19
Fine by me,” Minogue repeated. “Honestly.”
One coffee wasn’t enough. He studied the edge of the carpet by the hall door. Anne Boland had a Cork accent. He wanted her to keep talking, about anything really. She was explaining how Geraldine Shaughnessy, her sister, was so nervous about going to an interview in a police station.
“It’s not that she’s trying to, well… She’s what you might say a bit phobic. She may be trying to keep some hope alive, you know, now? Going into a barracks now would be a real trial for her, I’m thinking. She doesn’t know I’m phoning now. I stayed with her last night. Sure she hardly slept a wink.”
“I understand, Mrs. Boland. There’ll be no bother. But at some point we’d be needing to get an interview.”
“She’d never phone yourself now…”
“So you’ll steer her over to Grafton Street then?”
“I will indeed. I’ll wait for her too. I have my eldest, Grainne, here too. We’ll all be driving down to Mallow when ye’re finished, please God.”
Minogue said good-bye and put down the receiver. Anne Boland had suggested the hotel but Minogue had said Bewleys. He finished his coffee and packed the folder in his briefcase. He set the house alarm under the stairs, quickstepped out the hall door, and turned the dead bolt.
He tilted the sunroof and cursed the return of that rubbery ache behind his eyes. Ranelagh was all right for a change. The traffic lights by the canal were out of kilter. A cyclist tried to pull a stunt on the footpath as Minogue worked around a bus with a foot of space to his left. The cyclist came close to taking a header across the front of the Citroen.
Minogue stared him down. The man slapping tickets on windscreens on Molesworth Street needed more coaxing than Minogue thought fair for a senior Garda detective with a hangover.
He skipped across Dawson Street with his eyeballs jiggling up and down in their sockets in a way that surprised and appalled him. He arrived on Grafton Street almost in time to be crushed by a milk delivery lorry. He hadn’t a leg to stand on when the driver called him a fucking yob: the street wasn’t pedestrian only for another hour. Bewleys offered him no comfort this morning. The nod from Kevin Kelly, an enormous, sweaty, and good- natured ex-soldier turned floor man, seemed guarded, solemn even.
“What’s the story there, Matt.”
“This is an awful town, Kevin. How’re Theresa and the kids keeping?”
“Top form. Thanks. Jasmin’s into the art still.”
Minogue hammered on the lift button again. Kelly’s face turned grave.
“Saw her looking at her dinner the other day, but. Very strange look on her face.”
“That a fact now, Kevin.”
“Yeah. Asked me if we have any pictures of the Holy Family anywhere.”
Minogue knew better than to expect any trace of humor on the Dublmer’s face.
“Go easy there, Kevin.”
“What are you hammering on that button for? The lift is bollocksed.”
Minogue sighed and looked up through the metalwork.
“You better not be having me on, Kevin.”
“Where are you off to in anyhow? You’re a Main Floor man.”
“The museum.”
“Well you’re late then, aren’t you.”
“I should give you another dig for that. What are you saying?”
“Party of five gone up ahead of you. Two women, a teenager, a girl. Looked important enough. Even without the two heavies.”
Minogue put his foot on the first step. Four flights, a sore head
“Two of ours, is it?”
Kevin nodded.
“Unless everyone in town is walking around with radios and shooters tucked in the back of their trousers.”
Kevin Kelly cleared his throat and tugged at his shirt cuffs. He had risen to corporal before jumping ship.
“Tell them not to look so shagging shifty, Matt.”
Minogue stepped aside to allow a wheezing bedraggled man down the steps. Kelly moved in and grasped the elderly man under the arm.
“Heard a strange thing.”
Minogue looked away from the busker setting up across the street from the restaurant. He noted the excessive care Kevin was taking with the old man.
“You’re being fitted up for something ”
Minogue looked around at the passing faces.
“Your outfit I mean. The job.”
Kelly had a big smile for a young woman carrying an armful of books. He spoke out of the side of his mouth.
“Well, am I right?”
“Kevin, I can’t be doing business here now.”
“Don’t be so bloody contrary, will you. Bernard, my lad, well one of his mates was in a pub there last week. Some of the Smith crowd were there; hangers-on ”
Kelly’s face suddenly gave way to a smile and a wink at a couple. Minogue remembered that it was Kevin Kelly’s size and charm that had allowed Bewleys to stay open late for several years now.
“Anyway. He overheard some talk. There was something mentioned, something about ‘quits.’ Oh sure, pub talk. But he’s in tight enough with the Smiths, Bernard says.”
Minogue glanced at Kelly’s beefy hands adjusting his tie. He must work hard to keep the belly in, he decided.
“What kind of ‘quits’?”
“Something serious.”
“Like using a Garda squad car at Griffith Avenue for target practice?”
“Might be connected, I don’t know. I’m only passing it on.”
“Any name?”
Kelly shook his head.
“A friend of a friend — and all that. There’s no comeback on it. Just something I heard thirdhand.”
“All right, Kevin. Thanks.”
“Now I’m not a tout, for Jases’ sake. Okay? But if I hear more, I’ll let you know. If it’s the Smiths, you better
