I nodded, understanding what the game was. It looked like Dave had good reason for his fears: Geraghty was clearly out to undermine him. Geraghty took my nod as an assent, and continued.
"Good man. Because here's the thing: I don't believe you had anything to do with Jackie Tyrrell's murder up above. I want to hear what you were doing there, sure I do, down to the last detail, but I know there's no reason for you to kill her. And even if there was, you wouldn't have…all the other stuff."
"What other stuff?" I said.
"You first," Geraghty said. When I stayed silent, he went on.
"Because of course, I have enough to keep you here all day, and maybe charge you and all, keep you in over Christmas, even if we drop the charges then. A lovers' tiff, a drunken spat, private detective and a rich divorcée-who do you think's going to give a shite? So if you want to get out and get back to your case, you better let me know what's going on."
"What do you mean?"
"You and Donnelly, what are ye cooking up? What's he been telling you?"
"Nothing, what?"
"He was at your house last night. He was seen leaving."
"What, are you having him followed?"
"He was just…an off-duty officer spotted him, happened to be going the same way, saw him entering your house."
I waited to see what more there was. If there'd been a tail on Dave, if they'd followed us to the mortuary…no, they'd've stepped in then and there. Wouldn't they? Maybe they'd arrested Dave last night, after he left my house the second time. Maybe they were questioning him alongside me.
And if they were? What was I going to do, grass him up?
"I'll tell you about the case I'm working. Dave Donnelly's visit was…a personal matter."
Geraghty flinched as if I'd slapped him; his tiny eyes flared up.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean, it was a private matter. Between two old friends. You know, there's something on your mind, you drop around a friend's house, ask his advice. Trouble with your neighbors, or your kids. Or your wife. Type of thing. And of course, to make sure I'd be at the party he's throwing tonight. He said Carmel really wanted me to be there."
Geraghty was sucking his teeth and his nostrils were flaring; when I said the word wife I thought I saw him flush; by the time I mentioned Carmel, he was nodding briskly, as if this were a file whose contents he had already read.
"Better take me through the case you're working then," he said quickly, reaching to switch the video camera back on and not meeting my eye the while.
I told him about Father Vincent Tyrrell asking me to find Patrick Hutton. There was no reaction from him to this, which I took to mean that they still hadn't identified the body. I told him about Miranda Hart and Jackie Tyrrell, about the meal at the Octagon with Seán Proby, about getting a late call from Jackie Tyrrell, about the ten-year-old controversy surrounding F. X. Tyrrell's Gold Cup-winning horse By Your Leave and the race meeting at Thurles where the horse met her death. There wasn't a single thing I said that couldn't have been discovered with an Internet connection and, possibly, five minutes' chat with a racing journalist, or failing that, with one of the standing army of punters all over the city who divided their time between pub, bookie's and social welfare office, with the exception of the late-night drink with Jackie Tyrrell. Once he had established that Jackie had called to invite me over, and I had assured him that our conversation was largely about Jackie's anxiety that Miranda not be hurt in the process of finding Patrick Hutton, he was nodding as if our business was done.
"And were Mrs. Tyrrell's anxieties really enough to get you driving into the mountains in the middle of the night?"
"Well, I hoped I'd get more from her than anxiety, hoped she had something to tell me about Hutton's disappearance, something nobody knew but her. I hoped in vain."
When I'd finished, Geraghty looked at his watch, snapped the tape player off and stood up.
"As I say, Loy, we don't think you're in the frame for Mrs. Tyrrell. I've got an important case. You're free to go. Just make sure you're available for further questioning…and watch your step, am I clear?"
"I think so," I said.
But Myles Geraghty was far from clear, and as I walked down Harcourt Street to Stephen's Green and into the thick of the last hurling wave of Christmas shoppers in the icy morning, I set to wondering why. Geraghty had hoped to flatter me into dishing the dirt on Dave, but as soon as I suggested Dave was concerned about his wife, he backed off so quickly he was practically helping my coat onto me to get me out the door. Did he have a crush on her? There couldn't be anything going on between them, that was inconceivable, Carmel 'd never have an affair, full stop. Still, Dave had not looked happy the other night, and he was a tough old bastard; maybe a few hard chaws in the Bureau were giving him a hard time, but all that "anonymous phone call, loaded gun" malarkey, it may have been happening, but I couldn't see it getting to him like that. You never really knew what went on in someone else's marriage, no matter how well you thought you knew them. And you were better off that way, as far as I was concerned.
When I got to the taxi rank on the Green, I texted Dave and asked him to call me when he could. There was a message on my phone from Tommy Owens:
Took the car before the cops arrived. Call me when you're out. T
I called him, and he told me he had ten mass in Bayview to get through, and that after that, we were taking a trip down to Tyrrellscourt. He told me why, and I told him he could drive.
But first, I needed to see a priest.
TWELVE
I took the Dart out to Bayview: it was as quick as a cab, and a lot cheaper, and the direction I was going, no one else was: the northbound trains were jammed with last-minute shoppers heading for the city center. The railway line hugged the coast; the bay sparkled cobalt in the bright winter light. I ran through the case in my mind. The only people who knew the man on the dump was Hutton, apart from his killer or killers, were me and Dave. But Geraghty would make the face soon enough, or someone on his team would; no more than the rest of us, Guards were desperate men for the ponies.
It was a little after ten when I got to Bayview. I bought the rest of the papers and had breakfast in a café off the main street. All the tabloids led on what they had been instructed to call the OMEGA MAN, and the broadsheets too, apart, inevitably, from the Irish Times, which preferred an EU directive on the regulation of wind farms and a Christmas Eve message of peace and goodwill from the Irish president for its leads. There was little new in any of the stories; Myles Geraghty's picture was ubiquitous in all; maybe he was employing his own publicist. When Dave's number came up on my phone, I stepped out onto the street to answer.
"Dave, what's shaking?"
Before he'd talk, I had to give him a full report on what I knew of Jackie Tyrrell's murder, and on my time with Myles Geraghty in Harcourt Square, the latter severely edited to omit any mention of Carmel, or of Geraghty's grudge against Dave.
"Makes sense Geraghty didn't waste his time with you, even for sport. The State Pathologist's reports are nearly done. Word is, Kennedy had a crucifix and an omega symbol carved into his back, at the base of his spine. And one of the boys on the scene up in Tibradden, one who's loyal to me, gave me more on Jackie Tyrrelclass="underline" she was hanged, and her tongue was cut out, but she also had an amateur tattoo, the same kind as Hutton and Kennedy: a crucifix and an omega."
"So Geraghty's right, this is a serial killer."
"It looks like. Both Don Kennedy and Jackie Tyrrell had links to Patrick Hutton. Now they still haven't identified Hutton."
I thought about that. The Guards were better placed to conduct a murder investigation than I was, especially one on this scale. Keeping information from them didn't sit easily with me, particularly if that endangered people in Hutton's circle. In the end it was Dave's call.