them. Minogue watched the photographer twist on a lens and focus on Mooney. He mugged for her.
“Trapped in Dublin,” he groaned. “Sober…! Aarrghh! Help!”
She moved around him. The camera shutter went off in bursts. A heavyset man with an earring and a brush cut came through the door. He nodded at Daly and shook his head once.
“Fuck,” muttered Daly. “ Fuck! When, then, for Christ’s sake?”
Daly yanked a cell phone out of his pocket. Did they make them that small now, Minogue wondered. His own phone began to ring. Damian Little: the site van was here. The bomb squad finally had a key in. They were ready to open the Escort.
“Jesus Christ,” said Daly. “Is every Garda phone engaged these days?”
Minogue closed his phone.
“Not anymore.”
“What’s that?”
“The phone,” said Minogue. “Don’t be phoning us anymore now, like a good man. We need the lines kept open.”
Daly looked to Fogarty.
“Guards,” Fogarty said. Daly took in Minogue’s expression.
“Garda, ah…?”
“Minogue. We’re waiting too.”
Daly raised his hands and let them drop. The camera was clicking again. Minogue walked to the doorway. Malone paused by Batman Mooney.
“Thanks,” he said. “The picture? She’ll keep it under her pillow, you know.”
“Great. Catherine, yeah?”
“That’s right.” Malone said. “Me ma.”
Mooney gave him a blank stare.
“Are you really a cop?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Mooney nodded at Minogue. “Him, he looks like a farmer. So he must be a cop, right? You, though, I’d be wondering.”
“Yeah, I’m a Guard.”
“And your ma’s into the scene? With the music like?”
“ ’Course she is. We all are, man. I’ve a niece runs her own fan club on yous.”
Batman Mooney sighed. He drew hard on his cigarette.
“Tell the niece I’ll be looking for her at the Point concert next month,” he said.
“I’ll tell her,” Malone said. “Thanks very much. Oh, and by the way.” Mooney stopped in midstretch.
“She asked me to remind you,” Malone went on. “She wants her blouse back.”
The rain was coming in sheets across the lights now. The plastic cracked, hissed. Christy Griffin was cursing. Not real cursing, Minogue reflected. There was no real relish, no comfort to it.
The rain had soaked in under Minogue’s arms. He reached up to help Griffin pull down the plastic again. They’d need a couple of lights in closer after they had sealed the back of the car. He balanced on one leg to look down at the side of Shaughnessy’s face again. An anorak, a mountaineering type of coat. It looked like it was made of that dear stuff, the Gore-tex, it was called. A black T-shirt.
Malone had been helping tie the plastic by the front bumper. Pasty-faced, the eyes darting around on him. Well, Shaughnessy’s face wasn’t as bad as Minogue had expected. Except for the color, that is. Griffin was talking.
“Where do you want the opening left?” he asked again. Minogue stood back.
“Too blowy, Christy. Let it die down a bit, take the pressure off us here.”
He held the plastic tighter and studied the hand. He couldn’t see any scratches or bloodstains even. The lividity in the face didn’t help. This man wasn’t dead the six days he was missing. He handed the flap to Griffin and hunkered down by the taillight of the Escort. A runnel dropped onto his neck.
“Hold it over me, Larry, for the love of God, man!”
Malone had moved in beside him.
“Jases,” he whispered.
“Head first,” Minogue murmured.
He studied the drawn-up legs. A twenty degree tilt, he guessed. The blood would have come out steady enough.
“The blood drained from the head for the few hours before the air did its bit.”
Malone wiped rainwater from the hair above his ears.
“Drained into someplace under the boot,” he said. “Then leaked out?”
“Three or four hours is as much as you’d get blood draining out, Tommy.”
“Kept pouring — draining out, like — when the car was left here?”
Minogue went down on his knees. He squinted at the stain.
“See the dent in the panel there?” said Griffin. “You’ll find a hole there.”
Minogue stood. His head pushed at the plastic.
“Thanks, Christy.”
Griffin rearranged the roof. Minogue waited for a lull in the gusts before stepping out. The rain hit his face like needles. Malone backed out after him. Griffin’s face sticking out of his hood reminded Minogue of a big, truculent toddler.
“Have to keep it tight, Christy. No choice now. Give it a half an hour.”
Griffin began to secure the tent around the Escort. “Bloody awful,” Minogue heard him mutter. Two more scene technicians showed up from the site van. Minogue reminded them about rain coming in under the car on the blood. He handed Malone the phone.
“Keep tabs on Mitchell, Tommy, will you? And poke around with any other staff. Press him on the times again. It’ll count for a lot if we can fix the time. I’ll do me calls from the site van. We’ll see what we have to do if the rain keeps up.”
“Sixteen million,” Damian Little repeated.
The heater in the site van hadn’t made much difference. Minogue’s coat was saturated. His shoulders felt like they were encased in half-set cement.
“That’s quid too,” Little added. “The last album.”
Minogue checked his watch. Little rubbed the window and peered out.
“No tax either,” said Little. “Not a bloody penny. They’re artists, you see.”
He turned to Minogue again and cocked an ear.
“That frigging tent of yours might be flying up out of there yet.”
Griffin and his crew were still securing the scene. Minogue had watched him driving masonry nails into the tarmac to hold ropes over the tent.
“I’ve a young fella mad about them,” Little said. “Wanted the price of a ticket there a few weeks ago. Guess how much?”
Minogue shivered. He looked over the diagram he had sketched of the boot of the Escort. There’d be blood collected under the spare wheel.
“Tenner,” he said.
“A tenner?” Little scoffed. “Where have you been? Go on out of that.”
“Twenty, then.”
Little tapped the side of a video camera case.
“Twenty-two fifty! And that was a deal, I was told. A deal.”
Minogue studied the copy of the passport photograph again. The nose, maybe that was the Irish part of Shaughnessy’s face.
“Not a penny tax,” Little was saying. “The States, Japan. Oz. Everywhere. They spend half the year in the air.”
