continued while they waited for the tea to draw.
“The clubs serve drink,” he was saying. “Alcohol?”
He cleared his throat again, excusing himself as he did. A pallor had settled on his features, and Minogue thought he spotted beads of sweat near his hairline. He hadn’t realized that Hughes had been that nervous.
“Pretty well every night of the week is party night now,” Hughes went on. “Dublin is very busy. Very modern.”
Minogue could not understand one word that Danute Juraksaitis translated of this. Mrs. Klos nodded.
“It is the same in Poland Mrs. Klos said,” said Danute Juraksaitis. “The young they want… life. Fun. This is freedom.”
A rough translation, Minogue decided.
Hughes turned to Danute Juraksaitis, and cleared his throat yet again.
“So, in the light of what has happened since,” he said, tentatively. “What’s in the briefing here…”
Mrs. Klos leaned in slightly toward Danute Juraksaitis.
“Did Mrs. Klos need help understanding it maybe?” Hughes asked.
No, was Mrs. Klos’ translated response.
“It was forwarded to her by our federal police,” said Danute Juraksaitis.
Then she said something to Mrs. Klos. It was answered with a nodding of the head. Minogue saw now that Mrs. Klos’ head had begun to shake, and her face had taken on that slack, stricken look he had seen too often over the years. He looked to see where she might fall, if she was indeed to keel over in a faint.
“It was explained to her,” she added.
Minogue busied himself pouring the tea while he eyed Mrs. Klos’ state surreptitiously. Hughes’ voice was tight when he spoke now.
“I could move on then and tell you what we know so far. What the investigation has come up with?”
He took his cup while he waited for the translation.
“Or maybe Mrs. Klos would prefer to ask questions right away?”
With Hughes’ question translated, Mrs. Klos shook her head gently, twice. Hughes nodded slowly. After several moments Minogue realized that everyone was staring at the teapot. It looked like nobody was keen to resume the conversation.
The scent of the tea took over Minogue’s senses, along with the tings, slurps, and the stirrings of spoon against the cups. Mrs. Klos used three sugar bags, and blew on her tea. Danute Juraksaitis didn’t touch hers. The room felt smaller now. More small beads had formed on Hughes’ forehead.
Supposedly moody, passionate, the Poles, Minogue wondered — but where had he picked up that stereotype? There was surely some common thing between the Poles and the Irish. It couldn’t just be the Catholicism. A rough history too maybe, with their own overbearing neighbours, and their own wide scattering to America.
Mrs. Klos shifted in her seat. She said a few words in a flat tone. Minogue noticed that Danute Juraksaitis had half-moons on her fingernails, that her hands moved slowly and deliberately when she translated, pivoting at the wrists as though she were doing tai-chi.
The silence in the room turned to awkwardness.
“I wouldn’t risk the coffee here,” Minogue said.
“True for you,” said Hughes.
Mrs. Klos smiled thinly when the translation had finished. She said something in Polish, with the word Guinness in it.
Danute Juraksaitis turned to the policemen.
“She said she has tried Guinness.”
Minogue pretended to be shocked. Mrs. Klos made a so-so gesture with her free hand. The smiles faded as quickly as they had arrived.
“Mrs. Klos,” Hughes began then. “I’d like to begin?”
Mrs. Klos tilted her head to listen to the translation, but her empty stare lingered on the map.
“And I’ll be asking you for information.”
That was enough to break her stare when the translation came to her.
“…Things about your son that you might not like to say…”
With the awkwardness thickening the atmosphere even more, Minogue released part of his mind out onto the coast of his native Clare, to the waves crashing on the Flaggy Shore. He wondered all the while if Danute Juraksaitis would balk, and suggest legal counsel.
“…For example, his friends, or troubles…” he heard Hughes continue. “Such as problems with the law back in Poland…”
Mrs. Klos bit her lip and her eyes went out of focus.
“She says she will help,” said Danute Juraksaitis.
“Only to help us see if there is any connection to here, perhaps another Pole, I mean, Polish person he knew…?”
Mrs. Klos listened carefully, and looked from Hughes to Minogue and back.
“It’s okay, she says. Tadeusz — her son — was not an angel always.”
Hughes seemed to be waiting for an okay from Mrs. Klos. Danute Juraksaitis murmured something to Mrs. Klos, who nodded.
“I’ll ask her a few questions then?”
Danute Juraksaitis nodded. Minogue saw her Biro waver as she held it over her notebook. He looked again at the half-moons on her nails, the sinews that ran to her knuckles, her wrist bone. She wrote slowly and sparingly as she listened to Hughes. When he stopped to await her translation, she turned the Biro on its head and let it tap on the notebook as she spoke to Mrs. Klos. Minogue found himself wondering if she was always so grave and so poised.
Mrs. Klos had only vague answers for Hughes, and Minogue was reasonably certain that everyone in the room was aware that he was merely going through the motions, asking the questions that they expected a policeman to ask. Who really knew their children, he heard himself say within.
Chapter 13
Brid had picked up a pizza from Superquinn on the way home from the child minder’s. Aisling was clinging to her, and her cheeks were red. She’d been crying. Fanning was at the door first.
“Go to Daddy,” said Brid, trying to pick up her schoolbag along with the shopping bags.
Fanning put his hand on his daughter’s back. She clung tighter to Brid.
“Let’s see if your dolly talks to us today,” he tried. She sniffed and buried her face in Brid’s collar.
“Sit down why don’t you,” he said to Brid.
“I can’t,” she said. “Take the bags will you?”
It was the hardest time of the day. Brid in from school, tired after the day with those hellions. The blood- sugar low, Aisling cranky and fighting one bug or another since before the Christmas. If it wasn’t a sore throat it was teeth, or a cold, or diarrhea. The kettle popped.
“Cup of tea? Or something decent?”
Brid’s frown eased a little.
“Have we something to celebrate?” she asked.
He smiled.
“Well this gorgeous woman just walked in the door, an angel in her arms.”
“You’re such a ham.”
She sniffed the air.
“You’ve had a little something already, have you?”
“Pretend we’re living in Paris,” he said. “Just for this evening.”
“And you’re Johnny Depp?”
He knew she was searching around this hour of no man’s land for something easy, something innocent to
