Hoey rose slowly from the table, patted his pockets for his cigarettes and then followed a meandering path around tables toward the exit. Minogue followed him, noting the head and shoulders down on Hoey as he threaded through to the doors.
Kilmartin was cagey. Solicitous and polite, his suspicion masked, he slouched in his chair and waited for a cue from Minogue.
“So there,” Minogue said. “He’s going to stay with us a few days until this gets sorted out.”
“Jesus,” said the Chief Inspector. “He looked a bit shot at the other day, I must say. I don’t mind telling you that I was on the point of taking him aside and…”
Minogue fingered change in his pocket and looked out the window of Kilmartin’s office. Clouds from the west ran low over the city.
“I’m on holidays, remember. All I want is for Shea not to get trampled on.”
“Oi! Don’t get on your high horse, mister. You know, and I know, that we can’t overlook things like this. I only wish he’d so much as, you know, hinted-”
“Maybe he did and we didn’t read it.”
“You sound like you’re blaming the world and his mother for this. That he was bamboozled, like. More excuses.”
Minogue ignored Kilmartin’s provocation.
“You’ll set up a leave of absence for him, will you?” he said.
Kilmartin’s tone turned righteous.
“Course I will,” he replied. “We look after our own.”
The Chief Inspector’s eyes slid around the room before lighting back on Minogue. He loosened his tie. His hand strayed to his collar and began stroking his neck.
“Think he’ll try it again, do you?”
“Try what?”
“He tried to top himself, man. Don’t play me for a gobshite here, I all right?”
Minogue held his breath. A Guard at the scene had probably let his suspicions slip and the remark had found its way to Kilmartin.
“Won’t be the same again, that goes without saying,” Kilmartin added.
“What won’t be?”
Kilmartin flung a glare at his friend.
“He won’t be! Hoey. The fella who is as of this moment hiding behind your bloody skirt!”
Minogue knew he mustn’t goad Kilmartin now.
“It’s a good thing he won’t be the same again,” he began. “Who’d want to be the same again? All hemmed in, at the end of his tether. It’s out in the open now. Between the people who care about him, I mean.”
Kilmartin’s eyes took on a glint.
“God, you’re the cute hoor. Out in the open is right. That’s the trouble! Lamb of Jesus, Matt, I can’t have a head-case on staff!”
Minogue clenched his teeth. The Chief Inspector tapped a cigarette against the packet.
“You took me on, Jimmy. Remember?”
“You never tried to do yourself in, man! You had a lot going for you back then. Never looked back either, if I may be so bold as to remark.”
“Shea has a lot going for him.”
Kilmartin spoke as though he hadn’t heard Minogue.
“Never one to lay his cards on the table, Hoey. I mean, I like him and all the rest of it. He’s done great work. But we can’t have things jumping out of the woodwork at us. Especially these days.”
Kilmartin was still now, his cigarette poised above the box. Minogue cast a glance at his colleague. The Chief Inspector stood up and stretched. Then he stood back on his heels and scratched across his belly. He had tried to keep his stomach in over the years, but his frame-his gait, his manner, his words-all mocked the idea of containment.
“The last cases were ugly, to say the least,” said Minogue. “Maybe Shea couldn’t leave them behind him in the Squad room. The pressure-”
“Oi, oi! What’s this, mister?” Kilmartin waded in. “A fucking sermon? Don’t talk to me about pressure! My insides are like the AA map to pressure! There’s surgeons building holiday homes and buying Jags and retiring early with what stress has done to my insides. Hoey doesn’t have to answer to the public and those fucking jackals in the media-I do. How many people do you know who could take that kind of pressure?”
Minogue nodded his head and pretended to listen. Kilmartin concluded his peroration and tapped him on the shoulder. The Inspector looked through the window at a gap in the clouds. He decided to drive along the seafront by Sandymount on his way home.
Kilmartin grunted and raised a conciliatory arm as if to conjure away the stupidity of those who could never understand him. Minogue knew that his colleague was coming down from his vituperative peak.
“I mean to say, Matt. We’re getting it from both sides, man.”
Minogue decided it was time to light a fuse.
“Absolutely,” he murmured. “Never more important to stick together than now.”
“Definitely,” Kilmartin declared, and tapped his forehead with his cigarette. “As long as we’re 100 per cent upstairs. The lift has to go to the top floor in our line of work, Matt, and don’t forget it.”
Kilmartin lit his cigarette. It was time, Minogue decided.
“By the way. Bumped into Tynan the other day.”
Kilmartin turned around one-eyed through the smoke. He stared at his colleague.
“Told me he’d pay us a visit,” Minogue added. “To, em, throw a few ideas around.”
“You don’t say, now. Tell him, if it’s not too much trouble, to throw his ideas out the shagging window, would you? They’re giving me heartburn.”
“I’ll see what he has in mind, I suppose, later on sometime.”
“Sometime? Jesus Christ, Matty, don’t pretend it was the dog that farted! Ever so sly, you drop this in my lap. What the hell does Tynan want? Come on now!”
Minogue shrugged and looked back into Kilmartin’s stony glare.
“Wait a minute there, you. Whoa right there. What are you trying to tell me? That there’s some connection between Hoey making a gobshite out of himself and Tynan’s blackguarding? Call a spade a spade, man!”
Minogue looked Kilmartin up and down before reaching into the cache of phrases he had built up over the years to deal with the likes of James Kilmartin. He allowed his eyes to open wide and he spoke in a whisper.
“Good God, Jim, what sort of man do you think I am?”
Kilmartin put his hands up.
“Oh, Christ, will you listen to that? Oi! Don’t piss on my shoes and then tell me it’s raining. Why did you wait until now to tell me that Tynan’s on the prowl our way? Is this what loyalty means to you? That you’ll run to Tynan if I don’t cover for Hoey here?”
Fully inflated now, the Chief Inspector disdained further words. He shook his head in disgust as he moved around the office. Minogue wondered if Eilis were recording all this.
“You’ve known me long enough, bucko,” Kilmartin resumed in a low growl. “I’m surprised at you. I eat threats and then I spit them out.”
“I sort of thought it’d be nice to, you know, get an idea of what’s on Tynan’s mind.”
Kilmartin spun on his heel.
“What the hell does that mean? Aren’t you in here to con me into something for Hoey?”
“You know Tynan’s under pressure to disperse us, Jim.”
“Thanks for the tip there, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t know. Tynan’s top dog, in case you didn’t know. He tells us all when to jump. Frigging Tynan. What’s his thing, Tynan? Jesus, I still can’t get a fix on him. The bastard.”
Kilmartin stopped by the window. The two policemen fell to watching this patch of the world.
“Listen, Matt,” Kilmartin said at last. “I’m not questioning your motives. You’re saying to me keep Hoey aboard or else-”
“-it’s not-”
“Shut up. I know what you’re saying better than you seem to. I’m saying to you that I’ll weigh things in the balance as I decide. Like the quality of the job you do on Tynan.”
“What job exactly?”
“You know what I mean. Get Tynan off my back. The Squad’s back. Maybe he doesn’t believe me when I tell him. You try it. Tell him the Guards down the country would make a pig’s mickey of a murder investigation. Tell him. Show him.”