“Okay, let me throw in a question now,” he said. “Declan King was at the airport to meet Leyne. So was Hayes. What did they know, how much, and how early?”
“King reports to the minister, not me. Hayes, I’ll be getting to.”
“They colluded in keeping information from us. What’s your view on that?”
Tynan began to stack the coins on the counter. He placed the last coin, a five-penny on the top He looked up suddenly at O’Leary.
“Tony. You and himself here give us a bit of room, will you. ”
O’Leary waited for Malone to rise. Tynan watched the door of the snug being pulled tight.
“Listen here, Matt. No more noises for now, about Hayes working behind your back. King, I can’t do anything about.”
“I had two connected murders on my hands,” Minogue said. “Three, now.”
“You don’t. The squad does. You’re off the case, for now.”
“We’ve been led. Now we’re being shoved aside. And Leyne or his fixers are papering over the cracks all the time. ”
“Leyne’s in a coma. He has brain damage.”
“He knew something was up. He’s been throwing bones to us. The private-eye stuff on the son, now the affidavit — but I say he knew all along.”
“He had his own interests,” said Tynan
“Two hundred million of them, is that it? Is that what concerns the likes of Hayes and King? Or you?”
“Did Freeman tell you that?”
“No. I asked him about the will and he got into a dander.”
“Well you’d just arrested him, driven around the streets, growling at him.”
“Why did Leyne have a lawyer with him? He was expecting the worst.”
Tynan lifted the coins in groups from the stack and began dropping them back on the stack.
“Two hundred million, I heard,” said Minogue. “Am I wrong?”
Tynan released the coins and rubbed his hands.
“It’s not two hundred million,” he said. “It’s fifty. It’s part of what he’s worth.”
He looked up from his palm at Minogue.
“Leyne made contact with people in the last government,” he said. “He had a proposal, to donate fifty million dollars to the development of Irish culture. It was to go into history, heritage centers. Like the Carnegie libraries years ago.”
Heritage, Minogue thought. He watched Tynan examining his palms.
“Let me guess,” he said then. “There’s a deal involved. An amnesty for stuff Leyne had, stuff he’d bought that was smuggled out of Ireland? Goddamn it, John, we give amnesties to tax dodgers and drug barons here every day, so why not Leyne?”
Tynan let the seconds pass.
“That was the deal until the son got himself jammed in the works,” he said then. “Leyne would never have to divulge who or where or how these pieces ended up in his possession. And that the fifty million would be very welcome, thank you very much.”
“Hush money,” Minogue said “A half-step up from extortion.”
“Look at the results,” said Tynan. “A lot of money for heritage here, recovering missing — stolen — artifacts too. Call it restitution if you like. That would be a good day’s work. Yes?”
Anything you want, Minogue was thinking, the hand grasping his arm.
“I think that Leyne actually tried to make me an offer,” he said. “Except that I was too thick to get it.”
“For all your work, you’re still a bit of a gom, I’m afraid.”
Minogue gave him a hard look.
“Well here’s how I see it then,” he began. “Or does it matter, at this stage?”
“It matters. Fire away.”
“King was in touch with Freeman on a regular basis. King would be doing the trick-bicyclist routine, the deal maker with the delicate stuff. Hayes, maybe the gofer to shadow Leyne or Freeman while they’re here. Fits, doesn’t it? Except that Aoife Hartnett is murdered. And Shaughnessy himself.”
Tynan turned on him.
“Listen,” he said to Minogue. “The clock has moved on. You have to come in now. The case proceeds, but you need to step aside for a while at least.”
“Why? Because now Freeman’s been murdered? Because we weren’t shown the menu? Because we crashed the party?”
“Among other reasons, because the minister has requested it.”
Minogue put down his glass. He studied Tynan’s face.
“John,” he said. “Wait a minute here now. You bought me a cup of coffee the other day. A nice cup of Bewleys white coffee. You asked about Jim dirtying his bib at the club. Fair enough, I thought. It’s wise to be on guard with this newspaper article, the Smiths stirring up trouble again. And Gemma O’Loughlin is out to sell papers. And then you talked about Shaughnessy, how you want to be in the know every day. Still fair enough, I said to myself again: a visitor, tourist, well-known family, profile — whatever. It has to be done right. Fine and well ”
Minogue paused to get Tynan’s eyes back from a study of the glass.
“But today, out of the blue, there’s a murder. It’s a well-planned murder. How well planned? They knew there were Guards there, and maybe even that the Guards might be armed. But they were determined enough, desperate enough… or maybe they were so well paid, so afraid of failure, that they followed through anyway. ”
He leaned forward. He could feel the muscles at the back of his neck quivering now, his head beginning to shake.
“There’s part of me knows that those two fellas were only after Freeman, John. The poor iijit panicked and ran for it. That’s when they got him.”
Tynan nodded once and looked down at the floor.
“Now they were nothing to the Smiths, John, were they?”
Tynan raised his eyebrows.
“I say they were there for Freeman. ”
Tynan picked up the coins again.
“There’s something you’re not telling me here,” Minogue said. “And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to find out myself. If you won’t let me at King or Hayes, I’ll go after them myself.”
Tynan let the coins drop into his other hand. His voice was soft when he spoke now.
“The last person who spoke to me like that was an assistant commissioner,” he said. “Was, I say Now he hadn’t been threatened, or shot at, like you have. So you’re going to make it. For now. We’ll let that last remark go by.”
“The suits went around you,” Minogue said. “But they’re not going around my case. We have three murders, they’re related, and I’m not going away. A bunch of robbed antiques and fifty million notwithstanding.”
Tynan let the coins slide over one another in his palm. Minogue wondered if O’Leary and Malone could hear him on the other side of the partition. Tynan glanced up from his palm.
“Okay, then,” he said. “It’s not just the money. Or even these, what can we call them — artifacts — he says he’s going to give back ‘to the Irish people.’”
The commissioner looked at the distorted glass in the partition of the snug. That head could only be Malone’s, Minogue decided.
“You talked with Leyne, didn’t you?”
“In the car,” replied Minogue “At the press conference, a bit.”
“Well, did you ever hear him hold forth on the state of the nation here?”
“A short, sour few words, yes. He was still back in the fifties. I kind of switched off.”
“You remember 1969, Derry?”
Minogue searched Tynan’s face for a clue.
“What about it?”
“The riots in the Bogside, when everything was going up? How it looked from here? Nights of burning houses, riots, and petrol bombs? Remember?”
