“‘Suggests,’ you mean,” said Crossan. “Why did he kill Bourke?”
“It was night,” said Ahearne. “He didn’t know Bourke from Adam. And he thought Bourke had a gun in his fist-”
“A gun?” Crossan echoed.
Ahearne shrugged. “We have an ashplant from beside the house. Spillner says he was certain that Bourke was pointing a rifle at him. So he let fly with the shotgun.”
“His defence is that he was in fear of his life?” Crossan spoke with a sharp tone of incredulity.
“It’s not for us to be deciding or guessing at what Spillner will or will not claim in his defence,” Russell retorted. “But I imagine that will be brought up at an inquest.”
“Inquest?” asked Crossan. “Don’t you mean trial?”
Russell’s expression didn’t change but he spoke more softly now.
“You hardly need me to explain the procedures to you, now, Mr Crossan. We give our reports to the authorities.”
Russell paused to let his listeners reflect on the way he said “authorities.”
“They’ll decide how to proceed on behalf of the State. We have plenty on our plates here in Clare, but we’ll proceed in good order.”
His eyes left Crossan and they settled again on Minogue. Russell’s expression had now changed but faintly. The edges of his mouth rose, in what ordinary citizens might believe was a smile.
“Remember me to Jimmy, won’t you, when you go back to Dublin.” The Superintendent rose from the table. “But tell him that Mayo should stick to the football. Leave the hurling to experts.”
Minogue was surprised to find Russell’s hand extended across the table. He shook hands with the Superintendent.
“Such as?” Minogue tried.
“Such as Waterford.”
Close, Minogue thought. He had guessed Russell’s accent as high-hat gloss on Kilkenny.
“Funny you’d pick them, now,” said Minogue. “My money’d be on Clare.”
“Safe home to ye, now,” said Russell, and turned on his heel.
Minogue looked back up the short avenue which led from Abbey Street into Ennis Garda Station. Solid, he thought, almost like a fortress. Gates and a house fit to stop any number of pike-bearing rebels when the gentry had built it as Abbeyfield House, two hundred and fifty years ago.
“Come on, will you,” barked Crossan. “Let’s not stand here gawking like wallflowers that were stood up on a date. I have work to do.”
“Well, the Mercedes is gone,” said Hoey.
“I’ll bet you Russell kept us there, lecturing, so as this cowboy German could get his bail fixed and have himself whisked away in that bloody Mercedes.”
A sudden gust blew grit down the street into Minogue’s face. He knew then what he would do. He followed Crossan.
“I’d like to go back in there and annoy that bollocks,” the lawyer said. “But where would that get us? A brick wall. Jesus!”
The swollen eyes widened even further, and Minogue took a step back. The sharp, cool air had greyed the barrister’s skin and watered his eyes. They reminded Minogue of some picture, one from his children’s storybooks.
“Not a damn word about charges, about whether he’s to stay in custody,” Crossan went on. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this Spillner fella is on his way to Shannon Airport this very minute.”
“Let’s go somewhere and sit down and drink a cup of coffee,” said Minogue. “Have a think and a chat. I have a phone call to make.”
Crossan blew out smoke and pointed conclusively at the curb.
A blue Ford Sierra with its antennae waving came down the avenue. Russell nodded to them from the passenger seat before the car picked up speed.
“Just happened to be there,” said Hoey.
Minogue drew his coat around him and looked up at the brown and grey clouds massed over the town. The River Fergus hissed over a weir, grey itself and flat, its banks lined with blackening leaves.
He studied the roof lines and the windows along Abbey Street.
“Time to stir the pot, I think,” he murmured. “Throw in another ingredient. I need a phone.”
Minogue sat next to Crossan and looked at the plate of sandwiches.
“Where’s Shea gone?”
“Off to get fags,” said Crossan. “Here, what happened to him anyway?”
“He’s recuperating from a recent accident.”
“Would he need to be irrigating his throat too with a few jars, maybe? I for one certainly feel the need this very minute.”
Minogue gave Crossan a lingering look to drive home the hint.
“No. The few jars are definitely not part of the cure,” Minogue said, and he bit into a sandwich.
“What’s this ‘ingredient’ you were talking about?”
“I phoned a man I wouldn’t ordinarily phone. You may know him. Shorty Hynes.”
“Not that bloody ghoul that writes for the Indo, is it? The murder-and-mayhem fella? Do you know him?”
The Inspector nodded. “I certainly do. He’s a royal pain in the arse. He’ll do nicely, I imagine.”
“Do what?”
“He’ll be phoning the Garda Commissioner about this fella Spillner. Why his bail might allow him to hightail it off to Germany courtesy of the German Embassy.”
“Oho,” Crossan snorted. “Good move there, Guard. The proverbial leak. I didn’t think you had it in you. You might as well fill in your request for asylum here in Clare after a stunt like that.”
“The public interest and the right to know, counsellor.”
Minogue took another bite and wondered how long it would take for Kilmartin to phone. Half an hour, he guessed. Hoey returned, tearing the cellophane from a packet of Majors.
“Let’s go over what we have, so far,” said Minogue. “See where the gaps might be.”
He rearranged the photocopies on the table and looked to Crossan.
“Will you start?”
“All right. We have the summary and copies of the book of evidence used to prosecute him.”
“Yep,” said Minogue. “All I found were copies of two Dublin newspapers’ coverage. Nothing new.”
“We all know that no appeal launched means no transcript?” Crossan asked.
Minogue nodded. “The full steno record is above in the strong-room in the Criminal Court in Green Street,” he said.
“Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here, but,” said Hoey, “why didn’t Bourke launch an appeal if the prosecution case was shaky? Didn’t his lawyer push him about an appeal, anyway?”
“Well, Jamesy recalled Tighe talking to him about it,” said Crossan. “And I talked to Tighe about it. According to him, Jamesy turned it down. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Bourke was a poet, you have to understand, and he had to have his way right to the end,’ says Tighe to me.”
“What does that mean, the poet thing?” asked Minogue.
“To pay the price maybe,” Crossan replied. “Give one’s life in lieu, that sort of grand gesture.”
“He wanted to be punished for killing his sweetheart, like?” Hoey asked.
The lawyer looked squarely at Hoey.
“A crooked kind of grandeur in this day and age, you’re thinking?”
Hoey’s mouth hung slightly open. A stream of smoke cascaded slowly over his lower lip as he squinted at the barrister. Crossan took a deep breath, blew it out slowly from puffed cheeks and sat back in his chair.
“Something broke inside Jamesy the first day of the trial, Tighe said. I believe that. It was like he gave up. And that attitude stayed with him for a long time, he told me.”
“Why’d he give up?” Minogue asked. “The second day, you said.”
“Okay. Tighe entered the not-guilty plea. The prosecution is going to use circumstantial evidence to put Jamesy there with the matches in his hand and corroboration as regards a motive. State gets up, Tighe told me, and presents witnesses: the Guard, Naughton. Tighe’s hands are tied in a sense because Jamesy had blacked out. But Tighe knows what he wants out of the not-guilty; the worst he can get, he figures, is manslaughter. Pucks of diminished responsibility and everything else. So far, so good. Jamesy was very straight with Tighe, said he couldn’t remember a damn thing, yes, he was really angry at Jane Clark, etcetera. So Tighe is sailing along nicely until the State gets witnesses talking about Jane Clark. The judge didn’t rule many of them out of order, Tighe remembers. He was new to the job and wasn’t as full of vinegar as maybe he should have been. To make a long story short, Jamesy Bourke erupts right there in the court.”