wrists. Kilmartin’s final appeal came softly.
“Look, you can’t be taking chances now. You know as well as I do about concussion and shock. Stay another night here, can’t you? It’s for free, man! What’s the big hurry back up to Dublin?”
Minogue didn’t have an answer. From the silence, Kilmartin suspected some success with his efforts.
“Come on. Jases. Let me phone Kathleen. She can hardly eat the head offa me, now.”
“Don’t depend on it…”
Minogue’s thoughts were gone now. He had a floating sensation just before the fear overwhelmed him. The cottage he had stumbled out of, the room full of death. He shuddered and held his breath. Kilmartin looked down at the clenched fists. Hoey stepped away from the window and Kilmartin waved his hand low at him. Hoey slipped out of the room. Minogue’s jaw had locked with the strain and his breath was coming fast. He saw Ciaran being thrown to the floor by the bullet, Deegan’s face as he fell. And they didn’t tell him last night but he knew, the way they said they didn’t know, she was dead.
“Where does it hurt?” he heard Kilmartin whisper.
He knew now that he wouldn’t make it today. Kilmartin called his name again. Like a lost soul himself, whirling, vagrant and steadily slipping away as the dawn leaked into the sky. She was dead. He saw the ferry nosing out into the estuary, the Clare shore in the distance and the drizzle turning to rain. He focussed on Kilmartin’s face. He saw the alarm there and he wanted to reassure him. He opened his mouth. The doctor had appeared. The smug look was gone off his face now. He grabbed Minogue’s wrist. A nurse he hadn’t seen before elbowed Kilmartin aside and pressed a stethoscope to his chest. Minogue thought of Sheila Howard pushing the gun into his chest last night: She thought he had been holding out on them.
“If I had known,” he began to say. Somebody else came into the room.
He woke up stunned with a headache the following day to find Kathleen’s tired eyes on him. He closed his eyes again. The dream was slipping away too fast. He tried to get back, to see the face. Why was he smiling? He looked more familiar now but Minogue knew that the man intended to go. Who the hell was he? A moustache, black hair, eyes that did the talking. Looked like… Iseult? Tell her that sometime, he thought. Then he knew.
He elbowed up and stared at Kathleen. Alarm spread across her face and she came up out of the chair. His eyes left hers and looked beyond her.
“Matt,” she called out. Her hands were on his shoulders. “Will I get the doctor?”
He wondered if she still had that snapshot of him when he’d had the moustache. Two years after they were married, he thought: twenty-eight? His eyes returned to study her face.
“Are you awake now, love?” she asked again. “Are you all right?”
That familiar look to the face in the dream. It had to be. His mouth was full of dust, it seemed. He strained to get his tongue around the words.
“If he was here now, I mean, if he was with us, like… How old would he be now?”
Kathleen’s mouth stayed open and her eyes grew larger still. She leaned in over him and he looked back into her stricken stare. Hoey, he thought, Nolan, Ciaran. The child Superman in Tralee that day, disappearing around the corner of the street. I’ll layve you there. For a moment he was on the ferry again, searching for the porpoises where the Shannon opened out to the sea.
“What is it, lovey? What’s wrong? Who do you mean?”
“Eamonn. Our Eamonn. How old would he be now?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Inspector began to feel claustrophobic. Drinkers continued to pour into the pub. They stood in front of the table where Minogue, Kilmartin and their wives sat, blocking them in. This idea of Kathleen’s seemed to be backfiring. Maybe he should ease off on the drink.
“How and when did this dump ever get to be so popular?” Kilmartin shouted over the din. “A glorified shebeen. They should do it up nice.”
Kathleen hadn’t slept well for over a week. She had planned this evening out in cahoots with Jim Kilmartin, Minogue guessed. On one of her afternoon visits to her husband in the hospital, she had brought up the topic of putting the house up for sale. Make a fresh start, her logic ran. Though Minogue hadn’t yet been able to say what he believed he should, she had read his expression. For over an hour afterwards, he recalled, she argued aloud with herself while he listened. Though dopey most of the time, he still marvelled that she had read his mind. She had finally declared that it would be good sense to put it off for a year.
A fiddle player tested bow and strings somewhere in the ruck between the foursome and the bar. Minogue was looking up at the men’s pony-tails, the women’s tube skirts. Perfume was thick and sweet in the smoky air. Kilmartin’s wife, Maura, answered her husband’s question.
“There’s a crowd of rock stars and film people living up around here, that’s why. Oh, look! Look, Kathleen! That’s him! Your man, what’s-his-name! Joey Mad-Again. Joey Madigan!”
“They’re brilliant!” said Kathleen.
To Minogue, inspired by two Jamesons, it appeared that she and Maura Kilmartin were both levitating. He looked at them crouched, hovering over their seats. Their heads moving from side to side reminded him of hens prospecting for remnants of grain in a farmyard. Invisible in the crowd, a fiddler played two bars of “The Rakes of Mallow.” The shouting and laughter dropped to a murmur. A tall, unshaven man turned around to find a spot to place his empty glass. Kathleen waved and caught his eye. Joey Madigan, stage-names Joey Mad and Joey Mad- Again, lead singer, founder and guitarist with the hit rock/traditional/folk group Social Welfare, looked around the table and raised his eyebrows.
“Howiya, Joe!” Maura called out.
“Howiya yourself,” he called back.
By the way this Joe wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Minogue pegged him for a man who could drink a lot and had done so tonight. He thought of Hoey. His colleague had taken three weeks’ sick leave. Minogue had last seen Hoey the day before yesterday. Hoey had attended four AA meetings, was dry and looked relaxed. He told Minogue that he was getting his inoculations and booking a flight through to Harare. Hoey assured him several times that it wasn’t a joke. Kilmartin believed Hoey, but continued to treat it as a joke.
“Heard you on the radio, Joe!” Kathleen said. “Will you sing? Will you?”
Since when was Kathleen so bold, her husband wondered. And that look on her face. Radiant. An adoring fan? Kilmartin was looking stonily at this recent star on the Irish music scene.
“Go on, can’t you?” Maura Kilmartin joined in. Her husband’s face set harder as he stared at Joe Mad- Again.
“Give us ‘Dublin Town,’ Joey. Go on, do,” Kathleen pleaded.
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Ah, go on, can’t you?” said Minogue. Kilmartin looked over to his friend in disbelief.
Now he remembered the group. This hit of last summer had launched the group properly. “Dublin Town” was full to the brim of the city’s mocking irony. Madigan had a singular talent for belting the lyrics out with angry, accusatory snarls. Joey Mad seemed to sense Kilmartin’s discomfort. The Chief Inspector had folded his arms and was studying the empty glasses on the table now. Finally, he glared up.
“Ah, go on, do,” he growled, and put on a flinty smile. “For your man here with the long face. It’s his first day out in a long time. He’s a fan of the Dublin crowd.”
Joey Mad tapped a shoulder in the crowd. Kathleen Minogue elbowed Kilmartin in the ribs.
“Will you look?” said Kathleen. “It’s the other one! The one who used to play with The Goners-Gabby Mac!”
She turned bright, excited eyes on Minogue. For the first time in nearly two weeks, Minogue felt the weight slip a little. Last night was the first night he had slept more than four hours since returning from Clare.
“He looks like a goner, all right,” Kilmartin observed. “The narrowback. Get a real job, pal.”
Kathleen turned to Maura Kilmartin and Minogue saw his wife’s hand splayed down on Maura’s forearm.
“God, Maura, it’s great! He’s going to do it! Fab, isn’t it?”
