“The Chief?” Crossan asked. “A summons to higher office in Dublin?”
“Hardly,” Howard answered easily. “More likely someone who thinks I can diddle the Revenue Commissioners for income tax or get their road tarred again.”
Sheila Howard closed the door to the hall. Crossan pursued Howard with the pushy mischief which Minogue knew was playing to the gallery.
“And can’t you do it, so?”
“Ah, now, Alo, that class of thievery is well beyond a TD. For that you’d need the services of a barrister.”
Crossan guffawed and his eyelids slid down a little. He sipped from his glass.
“Damn fine, I’d have to say,” he said, and smacked his lips. “The duty-free always tastes better.”
Howard looked sympathetically to Minogue.
“Familiarity breeds…and the rest of it.”
“With the exception of being married to the right person, I imagine,” Minogue offered.
“Making a virtue out of a necessity there,” scoffed Crossan.
“Aren’t you going to tie the knot yourself one of these days, Alo?” Howard asked.
Minogue found himself liking Dan Howard’s easy retorts.
“Tie the noose, you mean,” answered Crossan. “Or the yoke, maybe.” He nodded and held the tumbler against his chin as though considering sage advice.
“So as the women of Clare can sleep easier,” Howard observed. “Or at least forget their daydreaming and attend to their louts of husbands.”
Minogue smiled. Crossan seemed to take the repartee in his stride. It must be a friendship of sorts. Rivalry? Crossan put on a melancholy expression.
“Ah but sure, how would we bring up the children?”
Howard laughed and rested his head on the sofa-back. An older joke shared, Minogue believed, Howard rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger and then looked at Minogue.
“Alo digs with the other foot, I suppose you know,” he said.
Minogue remembered Eilo McInerny’s mention of it and nodded.
“Hence the expression ‘footless’ in relation to the amount of drink needed on this island,” said Crossan in a dry tone. “When we want to get beyond considerations of religion. Or lack thereof.”
Howard stayed with the quickening pace of the exchange. “Are you lapsed, is it, Alo?”
Crossan’s expression turned grave and mischievous. “More in the nature of prolapsed,” he murmured. “Herniated, you might say, from carrying such a heavy burden… Hiberniated, I suppose you’d say.”
Howard chortled and looked at the Inspector.
“I used to spend a lot of time and effort persuading Alo that he wasn’t an outsider. Then I realised he was milking me for my inherited faults.”
“Such as?” Minogue asked.
“Oh, you know. Having a pet Protestant, that sort of thing. We’re quite sophisticated here as regards the psychology, you know.”
“For being townies,” Crossan qualified.
“Maybe not as down-and-out cute as the people of west Clare proper,” said Howard. “Rossaboe people, now, they’re cute hoors.”
So he knows me and mine, thought Minogue. He yielded to the polite dig which Howard had used to place him so that he could allow it to boomerang back to Howard with more velocity.
“Cuter still after living in Dublin awhile,” he said.
Crossan spoke as though addressing a jury timid of him.
“Aha, yes. Well, I’d have to admit that being a God-fearing Protestant born, bred and starved here in Clare has its moments. Oh, yes. The urgency of the task of survival came to my mind as a newborn in the crib. ‘Litigate!’ the Lord bade me. ‘You’ll never want for a crust among such a disputatious people.’”
The Inspector joined in Howard’s laughter.
“There are said to be poor Protestants in Ireland,” Crossan was saying, and he sniffed at the rim of his tumbler. “Silk knickers and no breakfast. A romantic might consider that being an outsider.”
“Was that how you found your niche looking after the outsiders and vagabonds in matters criminal?” Howard goaded.
“If I do me job right, they don’t become criminals, Your Honour,” Crossan shot back.
“Alo’s a ticket,” said Howard to Minogue.
From the hall the Inspector heard Sheila Howard’s tone as she spoke into the phone. The fire and the whiskey had warmed his bones and driven away the creaking dampness that had been with him all day. Crossan finished his drink and let the ice-cubes fall back to the bottom of his tumbler.
“Well, now. In the course of a conversation, I explained Jamesy Bourke to this Guard here. Well, the best I could… So when Jamesy was shot and killed, I phoned his nibs here to see what the Dublin Guards might think.”
Howard listened with a frown of concern and nodded occasionally.
“And the answer is-nothing,” Crossan went on. “The Guards here are handling the matter themselves. We had this fact confirmed this very afternoon when we bumped into none other than Superintendent Tom Russell below at the station here in Ennis.”
Howard folded his arms.
“That kind of procedure or jurisdiction is reminiscent of another episode in Jamesy Bourke’s life,” Crossan murmured. He paused when the door opened and Sheila Howard entered the room.
“Sorry,” she said. She sat sideways on the sofa next to her husband. Minogue noticed that she had no drink yet. Howard scratched his scalp.
“Yes, well, the poor divil is at rest now,” he added.
Sheila Howard had picked up on the changed atmosphere, Minogue noted. She sat very still, her expression unchanged. Crossan did not conceal his cynicism now.
“The light of heaven to him.”
“His people have a plot above in the old church ground in Portaree,” Howard said. “I think we can see him put with them there.”
Crossan started to say something but stopped. Sheila Howard glanced at him and looked away.
“Jamesy cut himself off from people so,” Howard added, and stared at the fire.
“Someone will show up,” said Crossan. “Where there’s a will, there’s a relative.”
No one spoke for several seconds. Minogue had a momentary mental snapshot of these four people, all preoccupied with their own thoughts, sitting here in a comfortable room with the night thick about the house. He recalled the slugs on the steps, the dripping undergrowth alive with creatures making their move as the rain had allowed them.
“God, how things turn out,” said Howard at last.
“This Spillner fella is well-to-do,” Crossan growled. “There was a big, black Merc, with an embassy plate on it, waiting outside the station and we going in there this afternoon. We fell to wondering if the same man is now back in Germany.”
“And is he?” Sheila Howard asked.
“We don’t know for sure if he’s gone or not,” Minogue answered.
“Well, I believe I can find out,” said Howard.
Sheila Howard bobbed back in the sofa as her husband stood. Howard headed for the hallway and closed the door behind himself.
“Is Dan thinking of footing the bill for Jamesy’s funeral?” Crossan asked her.
“Until someone comes up with a better plan,” she replied.
Minogue let his eyes travel about the room. The colours muted by the light kept the room looking warm. Peach now, Minogue saw, perhaps ochre in daylight, and a definite orange, but none of these colours deadening. Waylaid by his own tiredness and lulled by the whiskey and the warmth of the fire, Minogue was slow to pick up on Crossan’s stare at Sheila Howard.
The barrister spoke in a tone of strained politeness.
“And how are your horses?”
“They’re all well, thank you,” she replied. “They were asking for you.” Minogue almost laughed.
“They have grand names, as I recall,” Crossan continued, still serious.
“Another drink?” she asked. “Oh, but that ice is a shambles already. I’ll be back in a minute.”