Minogue let his gaze travel along the carpet by the edge of the bed. The shadow there diverted around something. He got down carefully on his hunkers.
The notebook was one he had seen in a window in Wicklow Street, and almost admired it. Moleskin…? Hardly. He found his pen in his jacket pocket, and got its chewed end around the back of the notebook, and he gently drew on it. It took several stops-and-starts as it pivoted around the pen.
Malone had spotted what he was doing. McNamara too was watching.
The pen skipped on Minogue’s first try of the cover, but he lodged it under the cover and pushed in when the cover began to lift.
“Well,” said Malone. It occurred to Minogue that Malone had already decided on matters here.
“In my world,” said McNamara, “hit men don’t carry little notebooks. How about you two.”
Minogue said nothing. The writing was often bunched together in small boxes, with the writing going in several directions, and there were drawings everywhere. Some of it was illegible, but still its author had underlined several parts. There were numbered lists, exclamation marks.
Minogue heard Malone stoop down beside him.
“That says Donneycarney,” said Malone. “And there’s Finglas. Ronanstown. Crumlin — and I know that place, by God, Captain’s Road.”
Minogue made out other words: innit, dunnit/ dannit, roight, London?
“Well who owns it?” McNamara said.
Almost reluctantly, Minogue lifted his pen and let the pages fall back, stopping only when the inside of the front cover began to lift.
“‘Reward offered,’” said Malone. “And there’s a phone number.”
He stood, and took out his mobile.
“That’s Fanning’s number,” he said after a few moments. “His mobile.”
“‘These notes have no…’” McNamara said. “What’s that?”
“‘…monetary value,’” said Minogue, “‘… but are of value to the owner. If found, please call…’”
“Where’s his name then?”
Minogue looked up.
“Wanted to stay anonymous there,” said McNamara. “So’s anyone wouldn’t think they could, you know, get a big whack of money out of him.”
“Is he famous?” Minogue asked.
He received no answer. He poked his way back to random pages. There was a drawing of a street that seemed to be running with rain, with street lamps reflecting off the puddles.
“He’s a good drawer,” said Malone.
Minogue could now make out most of the words in a box that ran to the outer corner of the page. T falls for M’s girl — she agrees M is psycho, wants out — M enters pub coked wants to get T.
“Plots,” he said. “Ideas.”
“That’s not bad at all,” said McNamara. “That drawing. Real Dublin type of scene there. Very not bad.”
There were footsteps outside. McNamara stood up quickly, and strode to the door, where he intercepted a detective.
“Already?” Minogue heard him say. “Christ. Okay, go down and get them started, I suppose.”
Minogue let go of the pen as he finished reading something about a shipment from the docks. The notebook seemed to fall in on itself.
“Time to split there,” said McNamara. “You were never here, unless you hear me say you were, okay?”
“Thanks,” said Minogue.
“Tommy?” asked McNamara.
“I’m a ghost then,” said Malone. “See, I’m invisible. Him too.”
“You’re a ghost who owes me a big one then,” McNamara said.
In the hall, Minogue peeled off the gloves with some difficulty. He pocketed them, and turned around in time to see the first of the Technical Bureau appear in the lobby.
“Done in for his notebook,” Malone said. “That’d be a first.”
“What did his wife say again, about down the quays, and the Polish man?”
“He said he couldn’t tell her then and there, but if anything happened, to look in his notebooks.”
“Notebooks? Not, notebook, singular?”
Malone shrugged, and began a long, slow yawn that seemed to cause him pain.
Chapter 50
Kilmartin was fidgety, and he had a cowed, expectant look to him. The new clothes he had taken so much trouble to pick out just didn’t work. The cut of the jacket, the pattern on the shirt, looked way too full of effort, and the shoes looked downright uncomfortable. He cleared his throat, and turned up toward the restaurant with Minogue.
“A stone cold killer they call them,” he said. “The FBI.”
Minogue had almost forgotten the course that Kilmartin had taken years ago in Virginia.
“They profile them, they dissect them — in a manner of speaking now — and they do a thousand interviews with them, but they’re still a what you call it, a…”
“Enigma?”
“That’s the word. Puzzle, we’ll call it.”
“I heard they gave him four transfusions no less. Four. All those donations, just to keep him alive. And for what?”
The old Kilmartin was revving up, all right, Minogue noted.
“As for the other fella, well he wasn’t as quick on his feet as he should have been, was he.”
With eyes almost clenched shut, Minogue had taken a fleeting glance at the other man lying awkwardly between a chair and the table. The dark mass above his scalp was blood and something else Minogue didn’t want to know about.
Kilmartin seemed to be walking slower on purpose. They came to Wicklow Street. The Chang’s restaurant was within sight now. The deal was that Kathleen would bring Maura Kilmartin earlier.
“A shame about that poor divil though,” Kilmartin said. “That Fanning fella that got mixed up with them. Never knew what hit him, I suppose.”
Minogue was a little tempted to ask Kilmartin if he felt a bit sorry for the Murphy character, the one awaiting positive identification from the car.
“And then to just dump him, and the car of course — on top of a car he dumped earlier on. What kind of a man can do that, I say to myself. What kind of a human being… But why should I think that. God knows, we met enough of them over the years. Didn’t we?”
Kilmartin had been talking non-stop since they had parked.
“And another thing,” Kilmartin went on. “There’s no way around this: it dehumanizes people. The army, I’m talking about. Any army. Put a man in a uniform, give him a gun, let him think he’s better than the people he’s looking at, and that’s what you’re going to get — oh, and keep him ignorant, of course, so he’s sure of himself and doesn’t be thinking too hard about what he’s ordered to do.”
Minogue did not want to dip his toes in that one.
“But who’s responsible in the final analysis, I say.”
“For what?”
“What that fella did, or those fellas did. Out there in Iraq, I’m saying. By the way, don’t take this the wrong way, but your listening skills are not up to scratch.”
Minogue gave him the eye.
“It’s true,” said Kilmartin. “You know it. Sorry to say, but.”
Straight from the Self-Help section, Minogue wanted to retort. He began to make up titles for what Kilmartin had read, or consulted. Spousal Bliss Through Listening to Your Life Partner. Ears of Love. Tantric Listening.
