As she closed the door, Minogue heard Dan Howard saying thanks very much, Sean, say no more. He watched Crossan’s eyes lose their intensity, slip out of focus and turn flat as he stared at the fire.
“Why are you taking digs at her?”
“It’s a ritual,” Crossan replied dully. He didn’t look up from the fire. “Don’t fret over it.”
“Work out your digs some other time then. We don’t want to be raising dust when we need to get something from the Howards.”
Crossan gave a mirthless snort. “You think it’s sour grapes with me, Guard? I like horses, don’t get me wrong. I’m a horse-protestant, am I not? It’s in my blood.”
“Beggars ride to hell. We need their goodwill here, so back off with the smart-aleck stuff.”
Dan Howard returned to the sofa, frowning. Minogue felt suddenly irritated when the thought came to him: Had Crossan a sizeable chip on his shoulder? Was he here less to discover what had happened to Jamesy Bourke or Jane Clark than to embarrass the Howards? Self-absorbed and intent on his own battles, was Crossan’s judgement warped by some humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the Howards or their like? “Horse-protestant”: witty in context here, derisory everywhere else.
“You were right,” said Howard. “That man was put on a plane today.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of it. I suppose that bail conditions allowed him to leave for Germany.”
Minogue decided it was time to change trains or, at the very least, to get on board. He sat forward in his chair.
“I think I should tell you, Mr Howard-”
“Dan.”
“-Dan, that I’m not here tonight to discuss that case exactly. To be candid now, I have no jurisdiction at all in the matter. I am interested in an event which happened a long time ago. In relation to Jamesy Bourke and Jane Clark.”
“Oh, I believe that I knew what you were here for now,” said Howard. “A man of my calling has to be aware of things that are being associated with his name.” He smiled wanly at Minogue and looked over at Crossan. “You know what I’m saying, like…?”
The Inspector nodded. Dan Howard could pick up the phone day or night and check up on him. He might have already done just that.
“Some peculiar things happened in that case. Or, should I say, didn’t happen.”
Howard blinked and sat back. Crossan’s eyes stayed fixed on the fire as Minogue resumed.
“Now, it’s not that the case is reopened, no. As a matter of fact, I’m on me holidays.” Howard’s expression changed into a look of puzzled humour. “I thought I’d just look into it. Satisfy myself that the case was merely, how can I put it, a little more full of… Well, I’d better be careful with a brace of lawyers in the same room. Let’s call them episodic incongruities which mark the proceedings of law. I want to be sure that justice has been rendered.”
Howard smiled broadly as he leaned over to whisper to Crossan.
“Where did you find him, Alo?”
“Fell out of a bloody dictionary, by the sounds of that,” came the barrister’s droning reply.
Howard turned to Minogue again.
“I can tell you’ve had a lot of truck with the legal profession. Go ahead, now.”
Sheila Howard returned with more ice. She left a scent in her wake as she passed the Inspector. Flowery with cloves in it somewhere, he thought. As though all other sounds in the room were silenced and all other movements were stilled, Minogue heard the movement of her jeans rubbing while she walked. A gust rattled the window-frame. Unsettled, Minogue tried to keep easing out his thoughts as though they were a net issuing over the thwarts of a boat. Her face turned to the window brought to Minogue a confused memory of portraits in the National Gallery. He realised with near alarm that he couldn’t seem to stop himself staring at her. As though aware of this, she hesitated before sitting down. Dan Howard was waiting for him to resume. Crossan was lost in the glowing fire, his fingers driven into his resting chin. Minogue sought out Howard’s eyes to bring himself back. “Now I don’t want to be asking you things that’d, you know,” Minogue began, “bring up old, em…”
“Resentments,” said Crossan unexpectedly.
“You mean about Jane Clark,” Howard said. “Oh, you needn’t be worrying there. We testified at the trial, Sheila and I. A lot of things came out.”
Minogue dared a glance at Sheila Howard.
“If you don’t mind, then…”
Her forehead lifted and she nodded at him.
“Well, let me go directly to the matter. Forensic evidence. I was much taken aback to discover, for example, that there were no statements from the County Coroner in the book of evidence used in the trial. As to how Jane Clark met her death exactly, I mean. If she was asphyxiated from smoke inhalation, for example, or died as a result of burns, or from injuries resulting from the collapse of the roof during the fire. Her remains were recovered from the bedroom. That suggests she was asleep and was overcome by smoke or fumes before being able to make the effort to escape the fire.”
Minogue paused and glanced from face to face.
“But in the heel of the reel, I suppose, there have been cases where people who are sober have gone to bed and a fire starts, and they are indeed overcome by the smoke quite rapidly. Such that they, em, perish in the fire. Now what I’m coming to is this: In what condition was Jane Clark when you left the cottage that evening?”
Howard looked to his wife and then to his hands before looking back to Minogue.
“Do you know,” he began in a quiet voice, “it’s a bad thing to talk about someone who’s dead and them not able to speak for themselves. Bred into us never to speak ill of the dead, no matter who, isn’t it? That night…well, hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of it or some part of it.” He released a long breath which whistled through his nose.
“Jane Clark had a lot of drink that night,” he went on, his voice firmer. “I did too. So did Jamesy.” He began rubbing his knuckles and changing hands in the slow, measured rhythm Minogue associated with men who worked outdoors.
“She could hold a lot of drink as long as it was whiskey, of all things. She kept whiskey in the house and I know that she took a drop of it even when she was on her own.”
“How did you know, now?”
“Well, there were times I’d go by and she’d be working on something. She did a bit of pottery-she had a wheel but no kiln. She was keen on setting up a darkroom. She had a plan to do a big coffee-table book on the ancient sites around Clare. It was the Burren she came to see. She’d often have a glass by her. Not a lot, now.”
“Would you describe her as a heavy drinker?”
“I don’t know,” Howard replied. “It didn’t stop her doing her work. She had worked a lot on her own back in Canada, doing graphic art and designing and the like. She had decided to go around the world but ended up here. Days on end she was up on the Burren. High up on the rocks, now, where there’s nothing but the birds, I suppose.”
Howard looked down at his empty glass.
“I thought they were all like that over in the States or Canada. The way you’d see them on telly, like-martinis and cocktails and that for their dinner. She was much the same person with a few drinks on as without, that I remember. She had the same…manner about her, I suppose you’d say.”
“Meaning she had the same appetites,” said Crossan, his eyes still on the embers.
Anger flared on Howard’s face, and it surprised Minogue.
“Alo, there are some things-” Howard began in a sharp tone, but he let the rest of his words go.
“That night,” Minogue persisted, “that night, she was not, can I say, terrible drunk?”
“I’d have to tell you that I had a lot of drink taken and I don’t like drinking on my own so…”
“So you poured a few for her.”
Howard nodded.
“And did she keep up with you?”
“She did.”
“Were you drunk and you leaving her house that night?”
“I was half-cut, as they say.”
“Can you hold your drink, then?”