"Well, he'd hardly advertise it to someone he wanted to impress, Sergeant," Allen observed.
"So you put some store in the whole thing then?" Minogue asked quickly.
"Actually I'm almost sorry I mentioned it at all. You seem to be saying that it is a red herring."
"Were you aware that an anonymous note had come to the college security officer, Captain Loftus, suggesting that Jarlath Walsh might be involved in drugs?"
"Matter of fact I was. I'll grant it may have coloured my interpretation of the questions he was asking me. Like I said, I'm almost regretting having told you about this in the first place…"
Allen sat back in the chair and folded his arms again. Then, like a cloud passing over his face, Minogue watched the idea come to Allen. Allen leaned forward slowly.
"I have the distinct feeling that you're not asking what you really want to ask me, Sergeant, but you're trying to provoke me in a way."
Full marks, Minogue thought. Go to the top of the class. Did it really look that obvious?
Minogue said nothing. He watched what looked like indignation loosen Allen's manner. Finally he said:
"Doctor, I'm sorry if I left you with that impression. I wonder if I might ask you to sleep on the matter. Any small details or memories that come to you. A remark in class, a fellow student, anything."
"You think I'm concealing something, don't you?" Allen said.
"Not at all. I haven't been able to firm up anything on this effort about the drugs, you see, and it's distracting me. I must be a very suggestible person."
Not fooled for a minute, Minogue thought. Allen's gaze suggested a knowingness but an amused ambivalence too. Maybe he was working hard at not being rude, Minogue considered. Hard to blame him, with a detective who is flying by the seat of his drawers.
Minogue returned to the room he had been lent in Front Square. He determined to make an early day of it. At least it had stopped raining. Walking to the carpark, he found himself searching the faces of passing students for any signs of a son or a daughter. Were they all the same, students?
Climbing into the car, he assigned the day a four out of ten. Little remained of the rain except a saturated city and oily roads. Could it be that they might get a bit of sun?
Minogue wanted to sneeze but the sensation passed. A police car with sirens and lights going full blast went by him as he rounded into College Green. Damn and blast it, he thought. It would be better if he at least phoned Kilmartin's office and checked in. Go by the book. Minogue stopped at two phone-boxes in succession. Both had been vandalized. Reluctantly, he drove up Dame Street toward the Castle. Another police car passed him at the lights at George's Street, screaming away. Maybe it was a bank robbery, another one.
Outside Kilmartin's office there was no work being done. Several uniformed Gardai sat on the edges of tables, smoking. Minogue could hear the monitored voices of men out in the streets, patrolling. The voices and clicks drifted down from the dispatch room. Nobody in Kilmartin's office. Minogue strolled toward the dispatch room, nodding at several Gardai as he passed them.
"Inspector Kilmartin, lads?"
"He's above in dispatch, sir," a Garda replied.
Kilmartin was sitting in a chair next to one of the girls. She was studiously concentrating on her earphones, nervous at his presence. He was smoking a cigarette. He stood up when he noticed Minogue and he walked over to the doorway.
"Did you hear about it?"
"What now?" Minogue asked.
"They shot our lads out in Blackrock. It's still going on. They got the driver, but the two fellas with the shooters are on the loose still."
Minogue felt an approaching swell. He waited. Kilmartin was mooching about for someplace to kill the butt of his cigarette. His arm was wavering. Minogue felt light, cold. The day was transformed. Somehow the room looked lurid. It pressed in on him.
"The IRA or the INLA or whatever crowd, I'll wager. One of our lads was killed outright. The other one's alive," Kilmartin murmured, still wandering around the room. Minogue was taken up with watching the girl's nervousness as Kilmartin paced.
"Only a pack of animals would react to a uniform like that. They have automatic rifles. The place is upside down so it is. They have a cordon up. The army and the whole shebang is there."
"Where?" Minogue heard himself asking.
Kilmartin stopped walking.
"Out near the bottom of Merrion Avenue, near enough to Blackrock."
As hard as he tried, Minogue couldn't get the taste out of his mouth. The fear was like cheese on his breath. It sticks in your throat, it actually chokes you, he thought. Smell it on your breath.
CHAPTER NINE
The tanned man replaced the phone and walked over to the window. His room at the Shelbourne overlooked St. Stephen's Green. He watched couples and children and old people enter the Green. They haven't a clue, he thought, about what goes on less than a hundred miles from here.
Parked cars glutted the streets around the hotel. No one feared that one might contain a bomb. No searches, no midnight raids by troops. The shops were full, the pubs were open. A soft city in a soft country. It even made visitors soft. People became so flaccid that they feared slight changes to their self-satisfied equilibrium. A decision had to be made within the hour. The danger was in over-reacting, of pouncing too soon.
The Green was swollen with trees and shrubs, all dense with the day's rain. The tanned man was thinking of Minogue. The photo showed a tall man in a cheap suit walking in the Front Square of Trinity College. Totally out of place. A redneck. There was something cautious and reluctant about the face. Soft, maybe. He didn't put his hands in his pockets walking. Certainly not stupid. Was it possible that this Minogue had a hidden sense of an adversary out there, that this boy's death was linked to another world of events? It didn't matter now, be pragmatic. Kill Minogue or not?
Why kill? To be sure. Take such a risk, just get this one crucial delivery across the border to prove he was right. The place would be crawling with cops if that happened. That moron playwright would leak eventually. Get him too. No, needed him for this.
The tanned man decided that Minogue would live. He would stick with the story about drugs and build one more block onto it. It had to be something fairly dramatic, a bit of Mafia or something to it. Like being done in with a stone. The papers would say, 'Assault the work of drug related-criminal element' or 'Suspected drug link in assault of Garda.' It would have to do, even though the tanned man didn't like it. As he waited for the playwright to answer the phone, he wondered if Minogue knew that his probing was forcing somebody's hand.
"Are you getting the car ready for that trip?" he asked.
"Yep. He'll bolt on the goods tomorrow," the playwright replied airily.
"Another thing. Minogue, remember? Like we discussed. Get a car, that way. Leave something behind."
"Yep."
"You know how important this is. We're buying time until we can deal with the other thing that's come up. I'll be dealing with that other asshole before his knees give out completely."
The playwright laughed. He hadn't heard the Yank using bad language until now. It didn't fit with the suit. Could it be that Mr Whiz Kid might be human after all?
"Yes. I'll do the other thing myself. Kilmacud, is it?"
"Yes. No Roy Rogers stuff now. Think of it as a part. Imagine yourself as a gangster."
The tanned man hung up. He suppressed the little ice of anxiety which was rising in his stomach.
He returned to gazing out the window. The waiting was the worst of it. He acknowledged the burrowing truth that ultimately, no one was completely reliable. No one should be trusted in extremity. As the stakes rose with the latest dangers, he had felt his own control slipping, his sense of agency diminish. Like a bank of clouds, chance and circumstance were drifting in to conceal the elements. He had no choice but to wait and see what came in from the fog. He thought about Minogue again. Would his nerve go after a bit of pushing or would he dig in his heels?