The Four Courts slid along the top of the quay walls. It looked ragged today.
“Hey,” Malone said to O’Leary. “Were you ever shot at?”
O’Leary nodded.
“Where, in Dublin here?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“In a small town in the middle of nowhere. Near the border with Sudan.”
“And what was it like? Not the place, but what did you do, like?”
“I ran the other way,” said O’Leary. “They were robbers. I was on leave with another UN fella. We probably shouldn’t have been there.”
“You weren’t a basket case after it though?”
“I don’t remember really.”
“Well, I thought I’d be a basket case by now. After this, I mean.” He turned to Minogue. “But I feel, like, up. I’m actually very fu — , very annoyed, like?”
Minogue shivered. O’Leary had them in the car park in short order. Minogue looked over at his Citroen. It looked damned fine. He longed to sit in and coast off, away out to the west in it. Himself and herself, the Galway road, no hurry. He returned O’Leary’s wave. There was a bite to the breeze now. He looked around the sky.
“So, are we going home or what?” Malone asked.
Minogue wondered what Kathleen would say. She hadn’t freaked entirely during the phone call, but she was damned if she wasn’t coming in to see him. How could he fight that off without hurting her.
“I’m going to do a bit of reading and a bit of thinking,” he said. “Maybe a bit of talking. I don’t care where I do it. But, I’m not sitting and waiting.”
Malone looked around the yard.
“Plans, have you?”
Minogue nodded.
“Was that an order from Tynan or a suggestion?”
“An order, Tommy. He has to answer to people too, as well as we do. ”
“There’s no way this was the Smiths’ caper then. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Minogue nodded. Kathleen appeared in the doorway. Minogue went for her. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, hugged him tighter. She was fierce annoyed. She let him go and held him at arm’s length. Her eyes were red but the anger made them bright and steady.
“They were after the other man,” he tried.
“How do you know?”
He shrugged.
“And does that matter anyway?” she insisted. “Does it?”
He gave her another tight squeeze when he felt the tremor in her chest. She sniffed and detached herself. She turned to Malone, his hand on the door.
“You look after this iijit, Tommy Malone,” she said. “You hear me?”
“Yeah, Kathleen. Sure all the culchies need hand-holding up here.”
They followed Malone in. Farrell and Eilis met them in the hall. The squad room was quiet. Kilmartin’s door was shut. Minogue wondered but didn’t care where Purcell was. Eilis drew on her cigarette and studied the boards.
“It has to stop,” Kathleen declared to no one in particular. “The place is being run by gangs and mur — ”
Her voice broke. Minogue smelled shampoo from her hair, felt the folds where her strap had dug in a little tighter over the years. She had asked him out of the blue if she looked fat the other day. He hugged her tighter and listened without much interest to a two-way about a man who had collapsed in a pub. In his twenties, he thought vaguely. Overdose, he wondered.
Minogue felt her relax. It was Kathleen who pulled away this time. Eilis slid a box of paper hankies across the table. Farrell looked up from his study of the floor.
“Cup of tea,” said Eilis at last. “Or a smathan from the cupboard?”
“Tea’s grand, thanks,” said Kathleen a little too quickly. “You’re a star, Eilis ”
Eilis stubbed at her cigarette and looked up warily at Kathleen.
“Tell us about Iseult, will you,” she said. Eilis. “I’m dying to know how she’s going on ”
Kathleen sat back in the chair and closed her eyes.
“Sacred Heart of Jesus, Eilis. Between Iseult and your man here…”
“I’m going to make coffee then,” Minogue said. He waited in the kitchen for Malone.
“Worse, are you?” he asked.
“It’s got to hit me sometime. But I’m still so bloody wired.”
Minogue took down the kettle and began filling it. Malone was fidgeting with a fork.
“Boss? If we’d stayed we’d a been in Hayes’s pocket, or King’s. Wouldn’t we?”
“Probably. Hard to say. I don’t know, Tommy.”
“Well that’s what I need to think right now. You know what I’m saying?”
Minogue glanced over. The tremor in Malone’s voice was quickly disguised. He plugged the kettle in and leaned back against the counter. Malone breathed out between pursed lips several times.
Was that laugh he heard from the squad room Kathleen? He toyed with the filter as he drew it out. Malone was staring at Minogue’s coffee jar.
“Well?”
The kettle ticked. It was Kathleen’s shriek of laughter he’d heard. What was Eilis talking about? A man’s voice, could only be Farrell, derision; more hoots of laughter. He opened the lid and shook the jar of beans.
“Well what?”
“What’s the story now?” Malone asked. “We sit around this kip chewing our nails, is it?”
Minogue was not really surprised to realize that he had made up his mind a lot earlier. Maybe it was even when Tynan had led the way leaving the pub.
“The story is this, Tommy.”
Malone stopped hopping the fork off the countertop.
“Sooner or later I’m going to try my hand at a bit of, what would you call it, treasure hunting. Looking through haystacks, you might call it.”
Malone’s eyes narrowed.
“Still the job, like? This case…?”
“That’d be it, Tommy. Yes.”
“You’re not too pushed that he’ll be dug out of you, Tynan?”
“Well, no. In a word.”
He eyed Malone.
“I have three murders to solve,” he said. “We can’t stop the clock on them.”
He poured the beans into the grinder. One by one he picked up the half-dozen that spilled onto the counter. The laughter was louder. He cocked an ear. Eilis, that gift for making people laugh.
“Would you be considering going a bit of the road with me, Tommy?”
“Am I going to get a sudden attack of lead poisoning if I say yeah?”
“Doubtful.”
“Who minds the shop here?”
“John Murtagh. Farrell too. We’ll pull Fergal Sheehy in here to do his interviews.”
“Will I be on the dole if I survive the lead poisoning?”
“There’s always room in the dole queue, I suppose.”
“You’re not much on the hard sell here, boss…”
“Do I need to be? Give me a couple of hours to get started.”
“Started on what though?”
He closed the lid and looked up at Malone.
“It’s out there somewhere, Tommy. It exists. Whatever it is.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
