"Agnes, I've held off asking you certain questions. God knows, I've never had much sense of timing so I'd like to try them now. It'll speed things up a lot. Or it will close off some distracting angles anyway."
"I think you want to ask me if there was a Someone Else. Isn't that the way it goes?"
"That's about the size of it, Agnes. Can you help me? You see, this thing has hallmarks of what might be called a crime of passion. It's an avenue I have to explore sometime."
Minogue saw reluctance in her. She examined her fingers before she spoke.
"It's a funny thing, I suppose," she began, "but when you least expect it you have something you never expected to have. Would it surprise you to know that I didn't have a boyfriend until I started college here? You'd think the opposite, wouldn't you, that the local thing would win out and that you'd go out with someone from your own background…? Well, my father was assassinated when I was sixteen. You can imagine what that made of our lives."
Minogue watched her eyelashes as signs and when they stopped flickering, she continued.
"Well, I came here and, you know, I liked it. I didn't think I would. I felt that people in the South were not very sincere, if you know what I mean. This thing about violence. They didn't have to go through the results of their thinking. They just don't understand. It's not like 1916. I suppose you could say I was cynical." Son-e-col, Minogue heard.
"At first when Jarlath started following me around, I was annoyed. He was such a puppy. Embarrassing."
She smiled. Minogue was attentive at the same time as he was lost in thought. His mind raced on from her words, from her accent.
"Odd how things work out. Feeling sorry for him, I mean. The politicos used to teale him a lot here. You know how it is, the students who have a lot of ideas about society, have read a lot. Can you imagine how surprised I was when I heard myself defending and explaining Jarlath to Mick Roche? You know him?"
"The president of the Students' Union."
"Yes. Well, I was sort of going out with Mick. Or at least that's what he thought. I think he felt sorry for me, did Mick. Maybe even more than Jarlath. He knew my background. I felt I had to thank him somehow for feeling sorry for me. God. You know, I found out that people with any brains here in the South seem to be just hypnotized by the North. All Mick's talk is organised around it. There's a lot of fellas here in the South feel like that too, but all the most of them want is a bit of excitement or something like that. Mick is different. I think he felt guilty or something. Ashamed… How did I get to talking about this? Sounds like a soap opera."
Minogue smiled in return this time.
"… Anyway. I felt I was some kind of specimen. A ghost to haunt them here. But Jarlath didn't try to mine me for info like the others. Not head-over-heels or anything like that. He was very naive. Very. And, you know, I didn't mind that. He wasn't putting on like he knew or understood everything. Oh sure, he probably was opinionated, but he could feel things. That was the difference; he had a stomach. I felt bad for him when they laughed at him. His ideas used to get him into trouble."
"Dr Allen mentioned that Jarlath had a stake in something which wasn't in favour, academically at least," Minogue said.
Agnes' eyebrows arched.
"Something about a psychological model of Irish character that we could use to solve some of our, em, problems," Minogue offered.
Agnes turned to look at the window. Her hands were clasped together. Her head dipped as if to concentrate on her twining hands. Her hair fell to conceal her cheeks. Minogue waited. He saw a tear drop onto her arm. For no reason his sluggish mind could settle on in that room, he felt appalled. He shouldn't be doing this. This could be Iseult by chance of birth or geography. Without raising her head, Agnes picked a paper hanky from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. Then she tossed her hair back. Minogue saw the film still on her eyes.
"It's all right," she said. "Just some things. Some people would say he was just thick or that he was a part of a class who helped cause the stuff up North so he'd never admit to the'reality' of the situation. He hadn't been to the North once in his life. So there he was trying to build a big theory up for… for I don't know what. His family took care of him all his life. I mean what did he know about poverty or civil rights? Really?"
Agnes looked inquiringly at Minogue and then continued:
"The thing was-and I don't care what anyone else says-he was trying. I suppose it'd look sort of clumsy to an older person. When I think of it. Cooking Italian food and trying out wines. The Student Prince." Agnes' teeth showed in her smile this time. Then she frowned and looked straight at Minogue.
"Maybe I was the only one who noticed he was changing. I'll bet his parents didn't notice. I met them today for the first time. And the last time probably. I shouldn't say it maybe… but I felt I had seen them before. They didn't seem like strangers."
Minogue was thinking about Mick Roche. Could hardly call him jilted though. He had been circumspect, not the opinionated termagant Minogue had expected in a student leader. Perhaps give him credit for being able to conceal his feelings. Still, Roche had recognised the changes in Jarlath.
"Agnes, did Jarlath experiment with drugs at all?"
Minogue looked closely at her to try and gauge the risk. He had said it out of context, watching. Would she switch to anger? Minogue waited, seeing the frown on her face, not knowing if he had asked at the right time.
"Are you joking?"
Minogue didn't reply.
"Like I said this morning: No."
After a pause of returning his gaze, Agnes spoke slowly.
"Maybe I had better save you some embarrassment, Sergeant. You talk about drugs. Well Jarlath didn't so much as experiment with sex. He was all for cuddles and going to the pictures and walking me home. As for trying to stay the night… and it isn't even that I wanted things that way at all. But you know fellas, trying to prove things to themselves. Jarlath got pissed out of his brain after three pints. I mean, nothing doing. Can you believe that?"
"Yes," Minogue said simply. He turned away from the intensity of her gaze. She had decided in his favour by the slightest of margins. She still retained the challenging candour in her voice as if daring him to push his luck into rudeness. "Yes." Minogue needed to believe as much about Iseult and Daithi, that they weren't part of the touted libertine rubbish which the magazines fed to the middle-aged on their stale weekends.
Minogue heard a little ping in the back of his head. It came from remembering Allen's reluctance in telling him about Jar-lath's interests. Had Jarlath kept it to himself, this business about the effects of drugs? Wouldn't Agnes know? It just wasn't likely that he'd keep it to himself. Minogue found that Agnes was still looking directly at him, awaiting the signs of another challenge. No, he decided, he couldn't ask her now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The south side of Dublin being snotty, plenty of the cars which passed Gardai Kehoe and Cummins cost more than twice their annual salaries, before tax. The two were sitting in a Garda squad car near the Bray Road, the main thoroughfare $outh from Dublin. There was an agreement between them that their priorities would be given to Jags, BMWs, Mercedes and anything made in Italy that wasn't a Fiat. Speed traps were rare on Irish roads, but such a potential source of revenue as the billiard table expanse of the new Bray Road couldn't be ignored,
Kehoe and Cummins had been sitting in the car before morning rush hour some weeks previously, and they had observed a reddish projectile rocketing under the bridge in Belfield. Kehoe burned his fingers as he tried to get the cigarette out of his mouth, looking for the ignition. The UFO had obliged them by mounting a curb near Stillorgan, ripping off the front of the car and grinding to a stop after it had rubbed itself like a drugged, frantic cat along a wall for over two hundred feet. All this at ten to seven in the morning. Later, the authorities were to report that the showband star inside, one Malachi O'Brien of O'Brien's Country Treasures, a band enjoying a large following in all parts of the republic except Dublin, was too drunk to get out of the car. O'Brien expressed his gratitude at being rescued by the officers and added that it was only because the new Bray Road was so well constructed that his life had been extended. The car had been travelling at speeds close to a hundred miles an hour.