The Holy Family, Minogue thought. Iseult on a rant about patriarchy.
“Well she sort of looked familiar but…”
“I only got word on this newspaper thing, this profile thing, at one of Tynan’s come-all-yes there a month ago. I mean to say, does anyone actually go for this ra-ra stuff, open-house, relationship shite? Anyone who’s been in the job more than six weeks, like? Anyone with time on the beat? Anyone with a brain bigger than a shagging pea? Anyone smarter than Lawlor trying to feather his nest for promotion?”
The counties had yellow borders. County Sligo was the collar on the teddy bear that was the map of Ireland. Donegal Bay there, then the ocean. He’d never liked Sligo. He didn’t know why really. Maybe it was because it was in the way of getting to Donegal, his real destination on holidays years ago.
“Well?” Kilmartin said again. “Am I tarred with the Smith thing?”
“I don’t know, Jim. Things get around though.”
“Ch-a-rrist! A man can’t voice an opinion without some gobshite hiding in a corner and making a big deal about it! Had she nothing better to do?”
Minogue detached the phone from his ear. Hard to blame Kilmartin really.
“Well how in the name of Jases did that bitch get into the bloody club in the first place anyway? Answer me that one, if you can! Lawlor brought her, that’s how. It was Tynan started this whole thing, getting the press to play ball — and now look!”
Minogue’s extension buzzer stopped Kilmartin. It was Murtagh.
“A few things coming in,” Murtagh said. “They had Shaughnessy on the news this morning. Woke a few people up. Four phone calls came in to Missing Persons. Donegal, two of them, one from some place called Falcarragh. A local station. A call from a couple who run a bed-and-breakfast near town.”
“Falcarragh,” Minogue said. “Which days?”
“Early last week, before the Sligo B amp; B. The other one’s a guest house in Glencolumbkille.”
Glencolumbkille, almost as far west as you could get in Donegal.
“Here’s a wobbler for you,” Murtagh went on. “A call came from the museum.”
“The museum, here in Dublin? To do with Shaughnessy?”
“Yep, above on Kildare Street. There’s a Sean Garland phoned. Says he thinks this Shaughnessy came in for a chat awhile ago. Yep, a week or ten days back. He thinks Shaughnessy was asking about something or other. But here’s the thing: he didn’t come in as any Shaughnessy, says Garland. Garland saw the picture in the morning paper. He thinks that your man used the name Leyne. So there.”
Minogue dabbed at his nose and pulled out his photocopy of the Fogra Toradh notice. Missing person: Patrick L. Shaughnessy. L for Leyne? Why didn’t he know the dead man’s middle name?
“All right, John. Give me a minute here.”
He underlined Glencolumbkille, took his hand off the cell phone’s mouthpiece.
“You’re on the move it sounds like,” Kilmartin said.
“The news this morning seems to’ve stirred the bushes a bit.”
“I won’t keep you — just keep me posted if Tynan goes haywire on this rubbish at the club, do you hear me? While I’m away?”
“To be sure.”
“Write this down; I forgot to give it to you.”
Minogue copied Kilmartin’s son’s address. The Palisades? White flight?
“If anything comes up, in the papers or otherwise,” Kilmartin said. Glencolumbkille, Minogue thought, the strand beyond the folk village there.
“And here’s Brian’s fax number.”
Minogue scribbled it down
“And his e-mail — ”
“It’s all right, I’ll phone if there’s trouble.”
“Here: is it Jamesons with you? Or do you expect Bushmills?”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Oh, and what does Kathleen dab behind the ears, Maura wants to know.”
“Bushmills too, I think.”
“I bet you don’t even know. You bostun.”
“Chanel number something. A black lid. It’s pricey.”
“What isn’t these days. All right oul son, mind the trams now.”
“Jim?”
“I know, I know — you’re in a hurry. I’ll be off if you’ll let me. What is it?”
Minogue pinched hard at the bridge of his nose. What had possessed him to come up with this question now?
“Larry Smith, Jim.”
Minogue stared at his notebook while he waited.
“What about him? What’s your question exactly?”
“Just wondering, that’s all. You were the conductor on it.”
“Well I had to be, didn’t I. It was hot from day one. It had to be done right. I took it because there’d need to be high-level consult… Wait a minute. What are you saying? What do you want?”
“Is there even a remote chance…?”
“Well. Jesus. That’s how the damage gets done, isn’t it. Not by direct inquiry, oh no, never that way. It’s the slow way, the innuendo, the bloody gossip eating away like an acid at the thing until finally — you’re actually asking me? You who worked on it with me, you who sat in on all those briefings with Serious Crimes and those gunslingers, those bloody headers from C2? You can’t be serious. No way.”
“Just asking.”
“You already said that! ‘Just asking’ my arse. See? She’s gotten to you even!”
Minogue wondered if it was Leyne’s Foods was the first of the frozen foods which had shown up in the supermarkets years ago. American Style Frozen Foods.
“Look,” Kilmartin said. “It was one or other of a pack from Belfast, I’m telling you. Devlin or Harte — they’re known hit men who take contracts. You know we can’t get them on this. Come on now — you spent two days at the site with me, didn’t you? There was nothing. Are you forgetting? The dum-dums were down to bloody bottle caps by the time they went through him. Don’t you remember? Is it her, the widow, what’s her name? Or is it the brother, what’s his name, Charlie, rabblerousmg for an inquiry? He’s an iijit, but he’s sly. The fucker. But they’re all like that.”
“Neither, Jim. No. Look, mind yourself over there now.”
The rueful tone in Kilmartin’s voice then didn’t surprise Minogue
“Hah,” Kilmartin said “The FBI. We could show them a thing or two, couldn’t we? I’m telling you, we could. The cases where the crime lab is between your ears, hah? The Yanks… don’t talk to me.”
Minogue thought of the cocked thumb last night, Kilmartin’s squint as he aimed: Smih’ goh’ hih’.
“You’re telling me,” he managed.
He ended the call, eyed the duration. The state could pay the airtime on that one. He had kept the newspaper clipping from last week’s newspaper, the preview for the forthcoming series on the Guards. He took it out of the drawer. “The Changing of the Guard”: a bit glib really. But that was good journalism, wasn’t it. “The Old Guard” later on: well, there was something noble and steadfast about that. Holding fast against a tide of criminality. Plain and simple stuff, no guff and cant. He slipped the pages back into the drawer and stared at the phone. No he wouldn’t phone Kathleen right now. He sat back, tried to plan his next hour. Couldn’t.
Larry Smith and Company, limited. The simple fact of the matter was that Larry Smith had played cowboys and he wound up in the middle of a road in Baldoyle with bits of him all over the tarmacadam. Hollow-point bullets, brutal. James Kilmartin, a senior Garda officer no less and no more frustrated than 99 percent of the Gardai, had been caught off-guard voicing his satisfaction out loud. So. In the heel of the reel, who cared about how the streets of Dublin had been cleaned of at least one serious, lifelong gouger. A vicious little bastard in his own right, incurable.
He eyed the page on Iseult again before folding it and slipping it into his pocket. He headed out into the squad room proper. Murtagh had already entered the times on the board. The credit card trail, he thought. Receipts from the States cleared in about a week now. Eilis was copying the file.
The green light from the photocopier flared and died by the corners of the cover, but some escaped to run across Eilis’s neck. He returned her blank gaze for several moments. What was bothering her?