Minogue detected no one-upmanship in Wall’s voice. He remembered the Apache Country routine from Ward and Callinan.
“She told Mossie he gave them a bit of a fright. Asking about ‘the river.’ The Liffey like, down by the quays. We’ll see what her pal says, the other one who-”
As though on cue, the door opened, and led by a long beak of a nose that preceded a tightly cut frizz of wiry, rust-coloured hair over a pale face, Detective Garda Mossie Duggan arrived. Minogue rose and shook hands with this too-tall, bony-shouldered man with an Adam’s apple half hanging over his collar.
“Kev brought you up to speed here?”
“So far, so good,” said Minogue. “I think.”
“Well your timing is good,” said Duggan. “This young one I talked to, she was with her friend — and their boyfriends. Four of them.”
“Now there’s a picture,” said Wall. “Give me names, will you.”
Duggan flipped open his incident book. Minogue began to copy the names that Wall transcribed on the board. Tara Lynch (14); Alison (“Ali”) Rogers (13); Aidan Matthews (?); Justin Twomey (?).
“Thirteen-year-old girl,” Wall said. “What does that say. Skangers, is what.”
“Have you run the boys’ names yet?” Minogue asked.
“Not yet,” said Duggan. “But I could take bets before I do.”
He walked to the end of the boards, and tapped at the timeline with his knuckles.
“This Tara Lynch puts Klos there at about half-eleven,” he said. “‘We just happened to be going that way, it was a shortcut to catch the last bus.’ My nose isn’t the only one twitching, is it?”
“Did she say how he looked?” Minogue asked.
“‘Scary.’”
“Drink? Soliciting? Lost?”
“She thinks he might have had a few, but not falling-down drunk or anything. Said she couldn’t understand him. ‘The river I go, the side,’ she thinks he said.”
“The hostel,” said Wall. “He was trying to get back to base.”
“So they sent him up toward East Wall,” said Duggan. “And off he went.”
“She saw him walk off, she says?” Wall asked.
“Didn’t get to that,” said Duggan. “That’s when the father walks in. The mother was grand with me asking a few questions, but then in comes your man. Very het-up, very belligerent. Starts telling me the law.”
Duggan paused to set up his mimic.
“‘That child of mine is an effin minor, I’ll have you know!’”
“‘I know my rights!’” said Wall. “The usual rigamarole?”
“‘No effing way is she going to be dragged down to any effing Garda station!’” said Duggan. He dispensed with the fake Dublin accent then.
“And all the rest of it,” Duggan resumed. “Big row with the wife, right in front of me. Not the first time, I imagine. She was grand with the chat we were having, but in he barges, minor this and minor that.”
“Was she still minor,” Wall asked, with neither amusement nor rancour that Minogue could spot, “when she was traipsing around at that hour of the night?”
“Well don’t get started on that one, Kev,” said Duggan. “But it got better than I thought it would. I wished I’d taped it, in actual fact.”
“The parents having a row?”
“What she said to him, the wife,” said Duggan. “Remember, she’s the one who made that phone call. ‘My child knows right from wrong,’ et cetera. So she laid into him after he gave me the heave-ho. It was funny: there I was in the hall, him yelling at me. I’m ready to walk out the door, go back to the station here, start me paper work to get an interview with this kid, the whole letter-of-the-law routine. But out she comes, tells me not to budge. Stay right here, says she to me. ‘I’m the child’s mother! I come first, so I do!’”
“Standing up for her kid,” Wall said. “Maybe a history of abuse there.”
“Maybe,” said Duggan. “I don’t think she was scared of him. She was just fed up. Flaming row, but then… He backs down. Strangest thing. I thought I’d have to call in some lads, get the thing under control. Oh but if you could have heard it: ‘I’m not having her grow up like I done! She’s not going to end up like me!’ Hell of a thing to say in front of him. But it worked. Bottom line: parents consent to us interviewing her at the family home, a proper interview. Parents attending, of course.”
Duggan looked from Wall to Minogue and back.
“It gets even better,” he said. “They were with two fellas that night. Boyfriends, surprise, surprise. You ask me, I think the mother knows what happened, had a heart-to-heart with the daughter.”
“And wants to be first in the door,” said Wall, nodding, “before the others.”
“Hard not to think that, isn’t it,” said Duggan, and looked down at his nails.
Minogue realized that this was Duggan’s way of showing he was excited — calmly excited. He glanced at Wall, and received a slow nod in return. The momentum would only pick up from here.
“Go ahead, Kevin,” he said to him. “It’s your call. I’m only window-dressing here, to be honest.”
Wall made a brief smile, and lapsed back into thought.
“Could always start with the tough route,” said Duggan. “Set them up here in the station, the four of them, and play the game. You know: he says, she says — and then wait. Throw a few shapes if things bog down: accessory, withholding, obstruction?”
Wall tugged gently at his tie again.
“Ah what would Hughsie do?” Duggen asked with a pained expression after a few moments.
“All right, all right,” said Wall, his slight smile soon pulled back. “We’d better get started. Bring in the others — and uniforms and squad cars to do it. But fair’s fair. We’ll interview this girl at her house. But the minute it turns scrappy…?”
Chapter 21
Murphy answered his mobile on the second ring: but it wasn’t Murphy. “He’s busy,” said the man who answered. Fanning recognized the accent right away.
“I’ll phone him later on then.”
“No need. Where are you?”
“It’s Murph I need to talk to.”
“You said that already.”
“So tell him I’ll give him a ring later on.”
“He told me you’d ring. He said for me to meet you. Help things along.”
Fanning listened for any sounds in the background. That nowhere accent still confused him, often starting as a Dublin accent but getting lost quickly, only to roll back into it for certain words.
“Are you there? Did you hear me?”
A dropped h: East Enders. Fanning held his thumb over the button.
“Murph doesn’t want to work on the project anymore.”
“He didn’t say a word to me about that.”
“I know. That’s how he is but, isn’t he.”
“He gave you his phone?”
“He loaned it to me. Mine fell and broke.”
“Look, he and I have an arrangement.”
“Right. That’s why I’m here. Now I don’t want to spread rumours now, do I. But you must know by now. Like I was saying to you back in that pub. I mean you can figure things out.”
“What things?”
“Come on. You’ve got to admit, he’s not the most reliable bloke.”
“Well I wouldn’t be discussing that here-”
“You know he’s got a habit. I told you that, right?”
