shut up and enjoy it. And all the while he’s sleeping with every bitch he can find.”
Minogue pushed back further on the back legs of the chair. She jabbed hard into his chest with the gun again. The place she struck stayed numb. Jesus, he thought, his chest about to burst, she could go off the deep end and take him with her. Beyond his terror he realised that he didn’t know her at all. She hated her husband, that was obvious. Or did she merely scorn him, hating something or someone beyond and including Dan Howard? This was her revenge, to get in with these halfwit gangsters?
She drew herself up to standing again.
“The Howards,” she muttered. “I’m not a Howard, I’m a Hanratty. My father died and I was eleven. He worked digging ditches for the County Council all his life. It wore him down because he was intelligent and he could see another life for himself. He had a heart attack before he was fifty years of age. Died of worrying. He wanted us in school and getting good jobs. But there was something he never really understood, even though he said it a lot.” She paused, looked down at the pistol and frowned.
“I found out late enough too,” she murmured. “If you have it, you’ll get it. That’s how life is. And it’s no good thinking and hoping otherwise. It’s cruel. Nothing has to be fair and equal. The Howards do well and they don’t deserve to. But the rest of us, no matter what…”
She looked at Minogue again with a doleful, momentary smile. She walked away from him then, slowly and delicately, like a dancer rehearsing moves in her mind. Hearing her footfalls behind him brought the fear back to him: She was leaving him to the others. She started to pace up and down the room behind him.
“You must be good at your job. Me coming in here trying to get you to talk, and it ends up with me doing all the talking.”
“What about your husband-?”
She laughed lightly. “What about him? ‘Does your husband know?’ Is that what you meant to say? Does my husband know that Ciaran and Finbarr will get paid good money for fixing up the damage they did? Does my husband know crates of guns and ammunition and more were moving in and out of the house for the last eighteen months?”
She tucked the pistol into her jeans and let her sweatshirt fall over the grip.
“Does my husband know that I know he’s hopping in and out of bed with those ones in Dublin? Well now, Inspector down from Dublin, my husband doesn’t know. He knows fuck-all. That’s how much he knows.”
She looked down at him and resumed with a lilt in her voice.
“But I’ll tell you who does know. I’ll tell you who knows everything. Tidy Howard knows. He could tell you things. But he never will. He’ll go to his grave with everything he knows and it’ll be buried with him. And that’s just fine by me.”
She gave a little shrug as if weighing a decision.
“He knows because I tell him everything. It’s my way of thanking him. I visit him and I talk to him and I tell him the news. He always wanted the news. ‘Give us the news now,’ he’d always say in the old days. ‘If you haven’t any, make up a bit.’ Well, I don’t make up anything. I give him the facts. I tell him how Ciarein has me every way he wants in the back of his van. I think that my father-in-law is the type of man who’d be keen to hear about stuff like that. He certainly used to, and that’s no lie.”
Something squirmed in Minogue’s belly. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. He saw Ciaran scrabbling and shoving at her, then the paralysed, wasting shell limp in bed, unable to talk or scream while his daughter-in-law sat next to him, chatting dutifully.
“Oh, yes,” she went on, “I tell him everything because I know he’s discreet. He won’t tell anyone. I tell him the fun we have making a monkey out of Dan. I think he likes to hear my news too because I can see in his eyes that he knows what I’m saying. And I know he’s glad to see me because there are tears in his eyes when I get up to go. Yes, with his eyes popping out of his head like they’ll burst. Tragic, isn’t it? I hear the staff say that regularly. The tragic part…”
Had he recognised some of this power in her, he wondered. Her reserve that day as she walked into the Old Ground hotel, her coolness at home, pouring tea and putting up with Crossan. But there was a desperation too, he saw now, in her courting danger, a recklessness that would unnerve even those she ran with.
She stood away from the wall and flexed her fingers.
“Ciaran says that what works is if you start at the feet and work your way up every minute or so.”
Minogue struggled for control until he was sure the screams inside could be heard by her. “Sooner or later,” he gasped, “you’ll make a slip-”
She started to smile but it seemed to be too much for her to finish. Her face fell a little. Her eyes lost interest and an empty look took over her face.
“You’ve had your chance,” she whispered.
With her retreating footsteps the terror swooped down on him again. While she had been here there was some hope at least. The bottom of the door screeched as it caught and dragged fragments of cement across the floor. He looked over his shoulder toward the door.
“No,” she said, and she yanked at the door again. It jammed half-way.
“Fucking stupid bastard!” said Ciaran. “Stupid! Time’s up.”
“You heard him,” Sheila Howard said in a dead voice. “He’s sticking to it. He says he-”
“Ah, he says! He’s a Guard!” said Ciaran.
Then the voice of the stranger, this time without any disguise. He spoke in a drawl, as though weather prospects were being guessed. “He’s a Guard, all right. Ye certainly got that part correct. Is the stuff all out of the van, by the way?”
The gentle sarcasm, the local accent worked on Minogue’s thoughts.
“Yeah. It all fit handy enough in the boot,” said another man’s voice. Finbarr, thought Minogue.
“Thanks,” said the stranger. “A nice job of work. Good.”
“Well, how were we supposed to know he’d be hanging around the house this morning?” Ciaran erupted again.
“True for you there,” the stranger replied after a pause. The sarcasm was gone from his voice now. “True for you, boy. You’d never have expected it.”
Seconds of silence followed. They’re deciding, Minogue thought. No one wants to say it out loud. Footsteps shuffled, a sigh.
“It’s late,” said the stranger. “Too late really. Come on in now and we’ll pay our respects to your man inside. Leave that down on the bench like a good man, Finbarr, for fear you’ll drop it again and it’ll take the toes off someone. This is my job now.”
Minogue heard a low growl, as if he was clearing his throat, rising in his own chest. His own animal terror, his body’s need for any movement. He stifled the cry and jogged the chair once, twice, until he had a view of the door. Through the slit between door and jamb, a shadow passed. There was a clump as something heavy was laid on the bench. A choked-off murmur escaped from Minogue. Good God, he thought, his body was acting on its own-it knows something. His mind was gone.
“I don’t think he really has anything-” Sheila Howard said.
“Don’t be worrying yourself, Mrs Howard. You don’t have to do a thing now.”
“Don’t keep calling her that!” Ciaran’s voice rose. “For Christ’s sake, you’re always taking digs at her-”
“Sorry, Gary. Don’t fuss yourself now. It’s just that me and her nibs go back a good number of years.” Minogue sat very still: a good number of years?
“Come on now, let’s not be arguing. We can fix the rest up later.”
“I’m staying here,” said Sheila Howard.
“Ah, come on now,” said the stranger. “We’re all in it together. It’s a lesson for everyone, now.”
Minogue heard his own breath rush out of his nostrils. His heart was thumping in a cold, empty place. The door screeched open across the pebbles. Deegan stopped and looked at him.
“Jesus Christ,” said Deegan. “Who took the bag off him?”
“He couldn’t breathe enough to even talk, so I-”
“You fucking what?”
“Leave her alone!” came Ciaran’s rising voice. “What difference does it make now?”
Deegan wandered slowly back into the doorway. He shook his head and looked up from the floor. He looked at Minogue with cold, moist eyes, an automatic pistol in his left hand. Ciaran stepped in the doorway behind him,
