“Do you know where she might be going?” he asked. He watched her pick up another box. How could they look so heavy and they only potato chips, he wondered?
“Where would you be going with a bag in your hand?” she asked as she turned back to the shelf.
On a bloody holiday, he almost growled. She kept packing the shiny plastic packets on the shelves. Steadily the rows of Cheese and Onion, Salt and Vinegar filled. He muttered his thanks and yanked the door, almost pulling a pensioner in on the floor of the shop as he did. He kept the old man upright and asked him where Tralee’s bus and train stations were.
“The one place,” he said to Hoey, and turned the wheel sharply in a U-turn. “The buses and trains. She had to wait for the child to show up from school or from her playing.”
“What’s she running for?”
Minogue shook his head. “Who knows? Bred into her, maybe.” He reversed in the middle of the street, crunched the gears and shot forward.
“Maybe she has an outstanding on her,” Hoey said. “Or maybe she’s not a fan of the Gardai.”
“Perish the thought.”
Minogue braked at the head of a one-way street, deliberated and turned down, grunting over the wheel. He took out the key and stepped out onto the footpath. A bus revved behind the high wall of the station, punching diesel smoke into the air. Hoey went off to his right. Minogue stepped into the bus and looked down at the faces on each side of the aisle.
“Board at the platform,” said the driver. “And a ticket’ll come in handy.”
“Are there buses or trains gone out in the last little while?” Minogue asked. The driver was a grey-haired Dubliner, with a decade’s commerce with culchies in his approach.
“Which one are you hoping to be on?”
“Dublin, say. Or Cork,” Minogue asked with more urgency. The driver nodded toward a herd of buses half-hidden by a wall.
“There’s a Dublin bus due to hit the trail now, if it’s real excitement you’re looking for.”
Minogue skipped off the bus and jogged around the wall toward the other buses. Clusters of passengers stood near the door to one. Hoey appeared from the ticket office and waved. Minogue surveyed the faces as he headed toward him.
“Dublin,” said Hoey. “A woman and a girl with an English accent, chewing gum and blowing bubbles with it. The girl is black.”
“What?” said Minogue.
Hoey looked beyond him to the people boarding. “That’s what the man said. I dunno.”
Minogue realised he didn’t even know what Eilo McInerny looked like. She had a bag of some sort and a daughter with her. A black girl? He walked to the end of the shortening queue by the bus door and waited for the last passenger to step into the bus.
“I’m looking for a woman travelling with her daughter. I have a message for her.”
The driver gave Minogue an expert scrutiny in the space of three seconds.
“Not on here.”
Minogue looked down at the passengers settling in. “Are you sure now?”
The driver arched his eyebrows.
Minogue stepped down and looked about the oil-stained tar macadam of the station-yard. A bus wheeled by and Minogue studied the faces in the windows. Hoey was beside him then.
“Come on,” said Hoey. Minogue was still a little dazed. Diesel smoke settled in the air around him. Had Eilo McInerny bought tickets to Dublin and then decided to wait for a later bus? Maybe she had forgotten something and had gone back to her place, or to the hotel.
Hoey was breathing hard from his canter back into the yard.
“I took a look down the street the far side of the station,” he said. “There’s a taxi rank out there but no taxis. A woman carrying a bag’s heading off down the street. Come on quick or we might lose them.”
Minogue skipped along beside Hoey. “What did she look like?”
“Who cares what she looks like,” Hoey said over his shoulder. “There was a girl with her.”
The woman was walking hurriedly, but her short legs could not propel her stocky body fast. She stalked on, hand-in-hand with a girl in a school gaberdine. The girl’s hair-do brought her height to almost a head over her mother. Eilo McInerny knew that the two policemen were closing on her. Resolute, she pressed on, struggling with her suitcase as it clattered against her leg, refusing to look back. Her hand grasped her daughter’s tightly, and their joined hands waved stiffly in a martial parody. Drops of rain began to spot the pavement.
Hoey caught up with Eilo McInerny. She ignored him and turned the corner sharply. By the time Minogue rounded the corner, Hoey was walking backwards next to her, trying to explain something. The girl said something and Hoey looked over to her. The trio slowed and Minogue closed in on them. Eilo McInerny’s suitcase banged into a pole and she staggered back a step.
“Wot chew wont wiv moy muwer?” Minogue heard the girl say. Her upper body canted forward as she addressed Hoey. “Loyve ass uloawn, yeou cryeep!”
Hoey, still backpedalling, careered into a rubbish bin bolted waist-high to a bus-stop. He staggered away from it grasping his back and wincing.
“Missus McInerny, wait a minute,” Minogue said. “We only want a word with you-nothing more than that.” An elderly woman clasped her string bag closer and looked with pursed lips at the group across the street, “We mean no harm!”
He moved around Hoey who was hopping about now holding his back.
“Wait, can’t you! My friend here is liable to walk under a bus or something if ye don’t let up.”
The girl turned and made a face at Minogue.
“Loyve ass ulaown!” she shouted.
Her mother tugged sharply at her arm and pulled her further along the footpath. Hoey’s dance was slowing now. The Inspector caught a glimpse of Eilo McInerny’s face. A short, wide woman, she looked tired and determined, her face flushed with exertion.
“We’re trying to clear up what happened to Jamesy Bourke, the trial… We need your help.”
Eilo McInerny locked her gaze straight ahead and tried to move even faster. Her suitcase scraped the doors of parked cars and bumped into a lamp-post. With a sudden rip, it was on the pavement. She stopped and looked at the handle still firm in her grip. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. She licked her bottom lip, blinked and then threw the handle with great force across the street where it bounced off the roof of a car and fell to the pavement.
“Let me,” said Minogue.
“Pack oaff in don’t bower moy muwer nao mower!” hissed the girl.
Minogue stepped back and looked into the huge eyes of Eilo McInerny’s daughter. Great God, he thought, she has that look in her eye that it wouldn’t bother her at all to kick a Guard in the family jewels. Eilo McInerny wrenched her daughter’s hand, reached up with her free hand and gave the girl a clout across the side of her head. The girl raised her hands to her head as she ducked, but her mother hung on.
“Don’t be talking like a tramp, you! It doesn’t matter who they are or how they provoke you!”
Minogue looked into her face. Eilo McInerny’s lips were white with anger, but her face glowed. Nearer forty than thirty, he believed. She wore a white blouse and black skirt under her coat. Work clothes, he guessed. He placed himself out of range of a kick from her daughter and picked up the suitcase in his arms.
“Here’s your getaway bag now,” he said.
“Give it to me and then push off and leave me alone,” said Eilo McInerny.
He heard a Clare accent rooted under the cat’s meow into which he understood Londoners extended their O’s.
“You could help someone if you’d only talk to us awhile,” he tried.
Hoey limped up. Eilo McInerny took the suitcase from Minogue and held it across her chest. Her daughter caught Minogue’s eye. She stuck out a her tongue at him. “Piss off, copper,” she mouthed.
“Leave off that,” warned her mother. “Or as true as God I’ll hit you a thoose here in the street with everyone looking on, so I will.” She looked with open contempt to Minogue.