“And that siege with your man last year. Jesus,” he whispered. “Lawlor, the madman on the run for six years. Three solid days and three nights of shooting.”
Minogue nodded. Cuddy dug his elbows into the armrests and sloped forward in the chair, one eye half-closed as a shield against the ribbon of smoke rising from his lap.
“None of them come quiet anymore. Can you blame Reilly for using the hardware there?”
Minogue remained unconvinced. Cuddy rallied for more.
“While ago, in Feakle, we got a call there was shots up in a quarry near the town. There was a vanload of us left Limerick and a squad combing the place inside of ninety minutes that night. Nothing, of course. You can’t be taking chances.”
“But these arms dumps are for the North,” Minogue said. “And you know that. You read the same circulars as I do.”
Cuddy cocked a bloodshot eye at this Inspector down from Dublin.
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “Then how come we have a gun in the back of your nephew’s car?”
“He had no knowledge of what his pal had in that bag. And you know that.”
“With all due respect to you and yours now, your nephew has a mouth on him. It’s bad manners to be giving speeches about politics and constitutional rights to Guards who have been shot at.”
Minogue weighed a retort but decided to hold back.
“Anyway,” Cuddy continued, “the IRA has handed out guns locally, that’s plain to see. That’s what has us going in hard first time out. Can you blame us, I mean to say?”
Minogue couldn’t. He had watched the detectives shambling back to their cars where they now sat while Cuddy held this pow-wow. Maura had vacated the kitchen, her departure punctuated by the sharp thud of a pot of tea on the table between the two policemen. Minogue had liked what he had heard as Maura went back down the hall. She had stood up to her husband and didn’t care who heard her tell him to whisht and let the Gardai settle it.
“When did all this happen again?”
“Just around the eleven o’clock mark,” replied Cuddy. “One burst of shots-faster than an automatic, awful like what we took away from your nephew’s car, the way it was described-”
“Give over with that now,” Minogue waded in. “That’s Make-My-Day Delahunty’s style of management. This national sport of jumping to conclusions’s turning into a blood sport.”
“The shots came in the windows high up, as if to say they were warning shots. Phone line cut, nice and neat. This fella is kicking up murder. Spillner. He’s a big shot. It’s a damn sight different than knifing tyres and painting slogans on the walls.”
“It is that,” Minogue allowed.
Cuddy killed the butt conclusively, looking down his nose as though he were putting a fallen housefly out of its misery. He spoke in a monotone now.
“If the IRA is into this kind of a stunt so as to scare off tourist money here, it’s news to me. That’s all I can say at this stage. It’d get the headlines, let me tell you, and easy enough done too: a few forays at night, a bit of shooting. Millions of pounds frightened out of the country. The likes of yourself or myself might not like some German buying up houses here, but the law is the law and the EC is the religion of the day. We have to chase fellas and kick them around for the sake of some continental you or I wouldn’t give the time of day to ordinarily.”
Cuddy’s face had lapsed into an openly cynical expression. He issued a rueful smile then and scratched the back of his neck. Minogue recalled Spillner smiling, clapping to the music in the pub.
“We wouldn’t want to have to consult you in your official capacity if things get out of hand here and some bloody holiday-maker gets himself plugged one night in his cottage. Cottage?” He snorted and threw his head back momentarily. “What am I saying, cottage? Bloody palace he has. You should see it, I’m telling you. ‘Vy vould zey doo zis to me?’ I heard Spillner saying. Hah. I heard he even speaks a bit of Irish. Sits in the pub soaking up culture. Gas. Him trying to learn Irish, me busy trying to forget mine. They have more respect than we do ourselves, I’ll tell you that. Culture and stuff, I mean.”
“They’re welcome to soak up what they can,” said Minogue. “I keep on hearing how we have so much of it to spare.”
“Ah, there’s a Clareman talking,” said Cuddy. “You Clare crowd have all your high kings and fairies, but it’s far from palaces the likes of us in Leitrim were reared. I’ll be seeing you.”
Minogue congratulated himself on being but one county away in his guess. He had pegged Cuddy for County Longford. Palaces, he thought, and looked around the kitchen again. The old fireplace had been filled in even before he had left the farm for Dublin. As a baby he had been bathed here. Here he had argued with his father, played cards, poured and drunk whiskey over thirty years ago. He recalled the apartment brochures on the kitchen table in his Dublin home. Far from this indeed, he thought.
“Do you want a statement?” he said to Cuddy’s back. Cuddy turned with a wry look.
“Ah, no. Thanks. Ye were below in the pub, the three of you, so say no more. We found no one after a night’s work, you see. Truth is that Eoin wasn’t high up enough on our list. Otherwise we’d have been here in the door on ye at one o’clock this morning.”
Minogue followed Cuddy outside. The yard was full of sunlight now. The cold air caught in Minogue’s nose and made his eyes water. Mick and Eoin stood by the door to the byre. Cuddy didn’t spare them so much as a nod as the two cars left the farmyard, their tyres rasping over the patchy cement.
“Black and Tans,” Mick hissed.
Minogue’s anger propelled him across the yard in long strides.
“Am I one as well, Mick? Am I?”
Mick returned the stare. Eoin shuffled his feet and looked down at his wellies.
“You and your bloody notions,” Minogue went on. “Declare to God, you had me driven up the walls years ago. Inside your head must be like, I don’t know, the ruin of some old house or something.”
“And what have you?” Mick retorted. “Only the company of the likes of those fellas. Up in Dublin, you are-you have no home except up in Dublin. Dublin! Them that turned their chamber-pots on the men of 1916 and they marching away to be shot.”
Minogue looked away in exasperation. The hedges were dark with the sun low behind them.
“I did as much and more work in this very spot as you did, let me remind you,” he muttered then. “I know plenty about knocking a living out of stones and bogs. Them fellas just gone are none to my liking either, but they have this character weakness. We all do, if we’re human at all, man.”
He stared at his nephew in an effort to get Eoin to look at him. He realised that he had been preaching. He stopped then and his breath tumbling aloft was lit from the sun behind. The endlessly bright morning arching over the farmyard had swiped all his words. He tried to follow that small cloud which was his own spent breath dissipating. Mick was walking stiffly away toward the house.
“They don’t want to be blown out of their shoes,” Minogue called after his brother, not caring if he was heard. “That’s all that’s bothering them.”
Minogue drove into Ennis daydreaming about Santorini. The traffic slowed as he rounded the monument at the Mill Road. He turned by Harmony Row, coasted over the bridge on the River Fergus and drove down Abbey Street to the Old Ground hotel. Ennis sparkled under the sun, black shadow and glare of shop windows together in the twisting, narrow streets he liked. Pedestrians keen to see a familiar face looked to the passing cars. Knowing none himself, Minogue still lifted his fingers in salute.
With the traffic completely at a standstill now, Minogue rolled down the window. He leaned over and saw a Garda leaning on a car roof ahead, talking in the window. Bareheaded and domestic-looking, the guard had ash-grey hair and a beard that needed attention twice a day. He studied Minogue’s card.