“You could tell me a lot, I think.”
“For instance?”
“Well, for instance this. Is there going to be a film here?”
Fanning let his gaze roam the pub with a calculated vagueness.
“If you’re actually paying to do this research,” he heard Cully continue. “And this film thing you want done so badly, this film goes belly-up…?”
Fanning had decided. He’d finish his pint, no hurry, tuck the stool under the counter and leave. No retorts, no arguments.
“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.”
“I don’t get that. That bridge thing.”
“I’ll deal with it,” said Fanning.
“Murph’s a floater,” said Cully then. “You know what a floater is? A shaper. A dickhead. Hasn’t a clue. So you’re wasting your money on him.”
“So what I need,” Fanning said, “is real expertise, I suppose you’re going to tell me. The opposite of a dickhead. That should be easy enough.”
Cully seemed to savour this particular sip of brandy.
“But by definition,” he said, “that person won’t go near you.”
“Well I won’t take that personally.”
Cully was still immune to the sarcasm.
“The thing is, this crime business, as they say in the news, this crime business is like an iceberg. Not a good comparison, but you get the idea.”
“An iceberg.”
“Such a person,” Cully went on, “they could tell you, for example, that the cops are way behind, the Guards. That they only get lucky now and then.”
“You can back that statement up of course.”
For the first time Cully seemed to focus his attention on Fanning.
“Such a person,” Cully said, slowly, “would have no reason to talk to you, no need to. You see? I mean if your work is to fade into the background, the fly on the wall routine, you don’t go having a fit like we saw back at the, the event.”
“I couldn’t take it. It was too much.”
“Ah.”
“Is that a character defect or something, in your opinion?”
“I’m only making observations,” said Cully. “Offering a bit of advice.”
“It’s only losers need lots of advice I suppose.”
“Now there’s another thing with you.”
“What is?”
“Sarcasm. I didn’t come here to call you a loser, or run you down.”
“Fooled me.”
“Back to the point here. Giving Murph the heave-ho is proper order.”
“I haven’t given him any heave-ho.”
“Well do you see him here?”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t do it anymore. He got out of the research business.”
“Says…?”
“He’d wreck your project. He talks, and he talks. It’s all he does.”
“I’m okay with that. The talking.”
“Except when he’s smoking crack.”
“Who told you that?”
“Come on now. How much of what he told you is bullshit, would you say?”
“Some days ninety percent,” said Fanning. “Other days, maybe ten.”
“You’ll never know, will you.”
“Well it’s like you said, I can make it up then, can’t I?”
Cully pushed away slowly from the bar. He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and looked down at his shoes for several moments.
“There’s a man over there,” Fanning said. “A man who was at the, the event, earlier. Friend of yours.”
Cully raised his eyebrows.
“Is that a coincidence he’s here?” Fanning asked.
Cully turned, picked up his glass.
“A mate of yours. Right?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Cully.
Fanning waited until Cully had finished his brandy.
“Likes a certain football club. Reputation for crazy fans?”
“Pretty observant bloke,” said Cully.
“Well thank you. Just so’s I’m clear on this before I go.”
Cully nodded.
“You wanted to meet me to…?”
“Advice. Like I said.”
“And to tell me Murph is a useless iijit. To give him the sack.”
“Right. Better off without him.”
“And that this project will go nowhere.”
“Did I say that?”
Cully reached into his jacket pocket, and flipped open his mobile.
“Remember what I said about people who know,” he said
“Sort of. I suppose. What did you say?”
“They’re the ones who wouldn’t want anything to do with your research.”
“Very encouraging.”
“Unless,” said Cully, eyeing the display. “Unless it’s something they want.”
“I don’t get this. What am I missing, again?”
“Say you had this,” said Cully. He held the mobile toward Fanning.
The sound on the video was little better than static. The camera had moved unsteadily when it panned. But there was Murph on his tiptoes, staring at the fight, and Dermot Fanning. He heard the yelping of the dog in the static.
“People notice things,” Cully said. “I mean I did, didn’t I?”
“Do they know you did that?”
Cully shrugged.
“They had no problem with you doing this.”
“Here look, wait: that’s you again. Can you see it? Crap screen, I know.”
“Nobody tried to stop you. I find that interesting.”
“…that’s when he had him, he got under his jaw but he kept him rock steady. And over he goes…”
Fanning wasn’t watching. Instead he took in details. Cully’s hairline, a small scar by his ear.
Cully held the phone up closer to Fanning’s face.
“And now look.”
It was a still image when Fanning first looked. Then Cully pushed with his thumb and the clip began. Fanning saw Delaney, the bearded man, close his eyes and then flinch. In the blocky, shadowed movements behind, a man’s figure shook when the gun went off.
“I missed it,” said Cully. “But you know the rest.”
He folded the phone and let it drop into his jacket pocket.
“Came with its own script,” he said. “You just had to press Record.”
Fanning picked up his glass. His back was tightening up, and he was suddenly aching. The noises in the pub around him seemed different now, sharper, somehow personal.
Chapter 18
Minogue spotted Eilis in the car park, standing by her new Mini. The cold breeze had reddened her eyes. She was smoking. He was disappointed for her, but relieved too. He parked and, skirting the grey, mossy wall that separated the Liaison office from the hulking headquarters and its sprawl of offices built in the 1970s, he made his way toward her.
She was indeed humming. It could be a Buddhist prayer for all Minogue knew. Sparing with words, this widely read and travelled Irish-speaker loner might well be proof positive of reincarnation. She was taking night courses, she told him last month. Spanish, for Peru. Eilis seems to have been serially “disappointed in love” for all the years he had known her.
“Dia dhuit, a stor.”
“God be with you, too, Your Honour,” she replied in Irish. “All well with you and yours.”
“Not bad at all. Considering the times we’re living in.”
There were piled-up grey-brown clouds looming over the trees. He spotted the trailing wires from an iPod hanging from her bag.
“April will be doing us no favours, Eilis, I’m thinking.”
She flicked her head for an answer and she drew on her cigarette. Kilmartin had first hired Eilis for the Murder Squad nigh on twenty years ago. She had applied for an opening in Liaison, telling Minogue later that it had sounded glamorous. Kilmartin had recently admitted to Minogue that he was half-afraid of her yet. He had also asked him if he, Minogue, had ever wondered if Eilis was one of them. Minogue baited him with it, goading Kilmartin to say “lesbian.”
She held out her pack of Gitanes.
“No thank you. Later, when there’s no one looking, maybe.”
“No later for you today, Your Honour. You got marching orders I hear. Someone hors de combat on a case. The Polish matter.”
“Just as you say.”
Eilis’ Munster Irish had revealed to Minogue exquisite nuances of sarcasm and irony that had escaped him before. Kilmartin had always been suspicious of her use of the state’s other official language. He had made irresolute efforts to match her using his own lumpen schoolboy Irish. It had never once been anything but a massacre, of course, and Kilmartin had learned to desist.