Minogue took Malone aside.
“You go with John too, Tommy. Take it handy with them. Gentle, no matter how they react.”
“What am I supposed to say, like?”
“Don’t say anything if you’re not sure. The attendant will pull back the covering as far as the chin. John’ll ask them. Okay?”
Minogue stepped over to the two women. Mrs. Molloy’s face had lost all its pink now. Her arm was twined tight around Irene Lawlor’s.
“Mrs. Lawlor. Detective Malone will escort you along with Detective Murtagh here.”
He cleared his throat.
“You don’t actually need to follow through here. We’ve already identified Mary from our end. Any time you want to change your mind now…”
Irene Lawlor’s words came from between her teeth.
“I know what they do here,” she said. “I want to see her.”
“No Jack Mullen,” announced Eilis. Minogue heard her type something else in. The phone was greasy in his hand. Minogue looked up from the page in his notebook where he had listed the points. Jack (John) Mullen-father. Mary in London. Egans, the gang.
“Doyle was looking for you,” she said, still typing. “Returning a call about her.”
“I’ll phone him in a minute. You’re sure about this Jack Mullen?”
“Nothing. He’s clean.”
“All right,” said Minogue. “I’ll try his place one more time, then we’ll go after the taxi companies. Capitol Taxis, the missus thinks. Ex-missus.”
Minogue switched the phone back to stand-by.
“Nothing on Mary Mullen’s da, Tommy. I’ll see what Doyler has.”
“Darlin’ Doyle? Prostitution?”
Minogue nodded.
Malone turned onto Dorset Street. The sun fell on Minogue’s side now. He was left on hold for over a minute before he heard Doyle’s voice.
“Morning there, John. Matt Minogue, yes. Have you anything to update the file on this girl Mary Mullen?”
“I’m afraid not. She hasn’t figured with us here since her last conviction there three years ago. Left the canal trade or maybe got sense.”
“Well, now that I have you, maybe you can smarten me up on things. I was wondering if, say, some of the trade down at the canal is done independently, like. Girls on their own, I mean. What are the chances she got the treatment from someone for not paying her way there?”
“Well, we’d probably get to hear about one in, God, I don’t know, one in twenty of that. Unless a pimp is beating the head off one of the girls in broad daylight.”
“But she could be there for some time and ye wouldn’t know her?”
Doyle didn’t reply for several moments.
“Well, now, you said it. As regards pimps now, we break up stuff by the canal pretty regularly. But it’s gotten right tough to make charges stick. The sting has to be good. Depending on things, Harcourt Terrace and Donnybrook stations take turns at cleaning up the trade. You always get gougers and girls moving through the area though. Girls doing business there very irregular, like. They might do a few tricks one night and that’d be all. Be gone in a few hours with a hundred quid in their pockets. But you’d see a lot of the faces turning up there again and again. Users who need more and more cash to feed the habit or pay off debts from their dealer.”
“The dealer and the pimp could be one and the same thing then?”
“Right, Matt. Pimps often double as pushers. Some of them feed the girls, see? But there are girls out there solo.”
“How about a crowd called the Egans? Do you know them in your line of business?”
“Does the Pope fall to his knees of a Sunday? But this is not their big thing though, is it? Unless they’ve changed. They’re more into the organized crime, I believe. Drugs, moving cars around, fences, all that. Protection rackets and stuff too. That falls more to Serious Crimes really. There’s, em, a gale of work being done on that very outfit lately, I believe.”
Code for go ask the Serious Crime Squad, Minogue registered.
“Well. Thanks now, John, I suppose.”
“Sorry and all but. I just haven’t had anyone finger them directly in the trade yet-but here, wait a minute. I’ll give you the name of someone who runs a drop-in centre up near the canal. For girls on the street, addicts and so on. Sister Joe, do you know her?”
Minogue didn’t.
“She might know more. She’s a nun. Here’s her number.”
Minogue scribbled it in his notebook and hung up.
“File on Mary is all we seem to have, Tommy,” he muttered. “Doyler and company don’t know her since then.”
Malone opened his hands on the steering wheel and shrugged. Minogue returned to watching the passing doorways.
“Didn’t expect the mother to talk afterwards,” said Malone. “Did you?”
“Maybe she didn’t believe us. Didn’t want to believe us.”
“Wonder what Mary was really up to the time she was in England though.”
Minogue looked down at the notebook again.
“Hairdressing course, beautician stuff. Well, we can check.”
Minogue looked at his watch.
“So we all get together?”
“To be sure, Tommy. Statements, leads, progress reports. Collate, exchange, talk. Drink tea. Evidence, rumours, leads. Dreams you had, even. It’s too early for any tight forensic. Depending on how I divide the job, we’ll split into teams. And that can change in an hour too. We pull in who and what we need from CDU and stations.”
“What about Mary’s place? I mean, what happens with that?”
“The gas company, the ESB or someone may have an exact, Eilis has put through a call to the local station too. When we have the number of the place, a station patrol car will go out and keep it for us. Then it’s up to you and me, when we’ve accounted for ourselves back at the ranch. The meeting probably won’t take more than half an hour. Get a cup of coff-”
The trill startled him. He picked up the phone off the floor. Kilmartin asked him where he was.
“Five minutes, Jim. Start without us.”
“Stay away,” said Kilmartin. “You have work to do. That place you got for the girl, the flat. Eilis phoned in for a hold on the place. Turns out that a woman the name of Patricia Fahy phoned in to report a burglary there last night. She’s the Mullen girl’s flatmate.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Nope. She’s up at the flat now.”
“F-a-h-e-y?”
“No e.”
Malone drove fast. He was lucky with traffic lights. Minogue let his arm dangle out the window. The Nissan’s door panels remained hot under his hand. He checked his watch as they turned into Inishowen Gardens: ten minutes. A group of boys was tapping a scuffed soccer ball across the street to one another.