“What else?”
“She’d taken sick leave not so long ago. She’d been given it.”
“Impropriety?”
“The opposite, I’m hearing. Burnout. I’m getting the upstairs, downstairs versions sorted out here. ”
“Is that it so far then?”
“Well, I’m finding out about culture on the side. Heritage.”
“Spare me, Matt. What I’d like to know is if you can connect anything. Or where you’re headed with both cases.”
“Too early. Sorry, but.”
“Is the PM on her done yet?”
Minogue found dust in the corner of a window sash. Maybe Malone had the right approach with bouts of bad language.
“I’ll phone you when I know, John.”
“She was a higher up. Right?”
“Yes. Hardworking, a lot of responsibility. Knew her stuff. She mixed, ‘networked’ — all that.”
“How does she, how did she, connect with Shaughnessy?”
“Still don’t know,” said Minogue. “Maybe we can put him in her apartment. There’s a team collecting there. An affair, I don’t know. A few things seem to be coming through. They seem to have traveled together. They didn’t want to attract attention, maybe even to the extent of sneaking into bed-and-breakfasts separately.”
“The lack of stuff coming in from the appeal, is it?”
Minogue wondered how Tynan knew
“I’d be thinking they went to some trouble to avoid people.”
He heard something rubbing over the mouthpiece at Tynan’s end. Muffled voices in his office. The rubbing stopped.
“You’re sure?” he heard Tynan say to someone else.
“Excuse me,” said Tynan then. “Two conversations going here. So I’ll be hearing from you later in the day on this. Even if you’re annoyed.”
“Fair enough. ”
“No word from James?”
“No. Am I to pass on a message if he does phone?”
“You could. We may shortly be getting information which would allow him off the stage here with the media. In relation to Mr. Smith.”
“Is it solid?”
“I don’t know. It happened a half hour ago. This fella has been known awhile but didn’t stand out for any particular reason then. ”
“Do I know him?”
“It’s not a Guard, that’s what I want you to know. A certain person started asking his barrister some very odd questions today at the Special Criminal Court. He’s facing a third conviction for an armed robbery a few months ago. He’s looking for a soft spot to land on.”
“Does anyone know about this outside the Guards on the court yet?”
“No,” said Tynan. “I’ll be phoning an editor in a few minutes. If they’re smart they’ll hold fire on the first article until we get a proper look at this fella.”
Minogue pushed the top of his Biro harder into the paper and let it go. He didn’t realize how annoyed he had become in the past few moments.
“So it’ll be okay again to have a few jars and wild blather with our colleagues above in the club?”
“Was it ever otherwise? Listen, now. There’s something you need to know. This Freeman character phoned me.”
“Leyne?”
“Yes. I asked to be kept informed. It’s to be kept quiet, but Leyne had told him to keep me up if anything happened. Very confidential.”
Minogue looked at a break in the clouds over the south city.
“You won’t be able to talk to Leyne, Matt.”
He thought of the old man grasping his arm: anything, he’d said. The yellow skin, the scar reaching up to his neck. Had Leyne known?
“This Freeman character, his potboy,” said Tynan, “he phoned. They have Leyne on a machine. The consensus there is that he won’t be coming back to us.”
CHAPTER 21
Eileen Brogan looked up from the page at him. Minogue had been thinking of a hospital room. Machines, tubes, wires.
“Sorry,” he said.
“July,” she said again. “That was the end of that stage. There was a do here, a reception. We went over to Sheehan’s pub after the approval was confirmed.”
“Then it passed on to the construction phase, did you say?”
“Yes. All the approvals were in, I heard.”
“The exhibition was the launch of the actual building for the center?”
She nodded.
“I don’t recall seeing any building work started there,” he said.
“I only know what I read from typing up letters and minutes and that or what I’d hear. But I did I hear her complaining here not too long ago. There was some holdup with one of the tenders for drainage work or something. The County Council there weren’t doing their job fast enough.”
Her voice began to quiver again.
“She was so meticulous, so… She worked so hard. I’d go at half-five and I’d tell her, Aoife, go home would you, for God’s sake. I’d feel guilty, and me only a clerk typist really.”
She was trying to stop shivering.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hadn’t realized.”
“No, no,” she said with an edge to her voice now. “I want to do the best I can here now. For Aoife.”
She stared at the Biro Minogue turned against his thumb.
“She wasn’t the kind to talk about home life much. Maybe that’s because she wasn’t married or that. She’d talk about her niece now, or about people she knew.”
“Did she maybe mention things that were on her mind? Upsetting her?”
“You asked me that earlier, I know, and I’ve been trying to think. I didn’t know anything about that few weeks she took off until the afternoon before.”
“You got no impression she resented it?”
“No. I knew she was tired. She wouldn’t complain and she’d just carry on, but there was something missing. I’d never have asked her. I used to ask myself well what would Aoife want, like. Me — I’m just, well, there’s Ronan and me. Not much room for anything else. No holidays or car, not even a house for God’s sake, but me ma and da are great. They’re my family again, sort of. Since Tony and that. Aoife hadn’t been lucky well in the marriage stakes, I suppose — I thought.”
“You knew something about that?”
“Not really,” she replied. “I mean, nobody told me. But I saw her here — right over there, by the window I knew she’d been crying. This is months ago. And I kind of knew — well, there was a feeling — it was a letdown with a fella. I didn’t want to be putting me foot in it. Aoife had her own sort of territory. What would I say?”
“Reserve, do you mean?”
“I suppose. Not snobby now or that. The way a good boss is, not trying to be pallsy-walsy or that. Some people found her cool because of it, or they were a bit put out by her being so smart and all. I liked that about her.
