“A hairdo like that, maybe?”
Murtagh sat back.
“I suppose I’ll be looking out for it.”
One of the detectives handed an information slip to Murtagh.
“Call in from Donegal, a garage in Gweedore. A fella thinks he sold petrol to Shaughnessy awhile back. He doesn’t remember any red car. He’s going to go back into the books and see.”
“Follow it,” said Minogue. “Get a statement out of him. The day’s the first thing we need — and if there was a woman in the car too.”
The phone rang again while Murtagh was plotting a route on the map with the end of his Biro and guessing the times it took to drive without stops. Minogue watched Brophy writing up the information form. The other line rang.
“A bit of life now,” said Sheehy. “Maybe we’ll get the jump yet.”
Minogue wrenched his gaze away from Brophy’s Biro. The biscuits has done in his appetite. He wondered about soup. He should phone Kathleen and let her know he’d be late. As if she didn’t know. He was getting a headache. The phones had gone silent again. He didn’t want to go checking in with Tynan.
Eilis was signing for an envelope from a courier when he stepped out into the squad room. Murtagh had taken the package already and had opened the flap. Photos slid out. Contact sheet, seven or eight 8 x 10s with yellow stickies on them.
Murtagh laid them out on his desk.
“These are the indies your man contacted for us.”
It was Sheehy who spotted her first. Minogue looked at the tag.
“That’s the same gig,” said Murtagh. “The art exhibit. Look: Shaughnessy there next to her. Give us the other one there — see the hair, the collar. That’s her.”
“Here she is again,” said Sheehy. He pointed to a group standing in front of a blown-up shot with fields and stones stretching to the horizon.
“Not the one with the belly and the dickey bow,” said Malone. “The Humpty Dumpty looking fella.”
Murtagh had pulled off the tag.
“That’s some European Commission somebody. And that’s her, according to this guy, O’Toole. Aoife Hartnett. The Humpty Dumpty fella there is Sean Garland. Dr. Garland, a big one in the museum. The opening of some exhibition at the National Museum. The… C-a-r-r-a? Carra Fields, it looks like.”
“O’Toole,” said Minogue. “The photographer? Have we a phone number for him there?”
Murtagh scribbled on a notepad and slid it whole across to Minogue.
“Casual enough there,” Malone murmured. “Shaughnessy I mean.”
Minogue studied the group again. Murtagh read out the list of names Turloch O’Toole had written on the tag Museum staff, a member of the European Commission with a French name. Some smiler from Mayo County Council, another one from Bord Failte. The daughter of the schoolmaster who’d stumbled across the site. Minogue let his eyes rest on the photo for several moments. He turned to Malone.
“Portugal, huh,” said Malone.
Murtagh slid a file folder out from under the photos, took out two pages stapled together, and laid it on the table.
“There’s a copy of that statement from Garland there. It’s an approximate about Shaughnessy’s visit, when he showed up — as Patrick Leyne, mind you. There’s staff phone numbers and extensions there. Her address is Terenure somewhere. It’s on the search we sent to Aer Lingus to see what flight she took.”
Minogue couldn’t make out much of the other pictures in the backdrop behind the group. There was a piece of a diagram with back spots and some pattern, half of the title visible: The Carra Fields, a Stone Age enclosure of 3,000 acres that was causing people to rewrite all the history books. Was it Kathleen who’d mentioned them awhile ago? Kilmartin?
“John,” he called out. “Can we get ahold of Garland this time of the day?”
Murtagh was halfway through a bag of cheese and onion crisps. He looked around for something to wipe the grease off his fingers before he plucked at the file.
CHAPTER 9
The voice was shrill, querulous. Seventies at least, Minogue guessed. Rambling probably, was Mrs. Garland.
“Who is it again?” she demanded. “A Guard?”
The piping, haughty tone was sweetened with what he believed must be a Cork, a dignified Cork, accent.
“Minogue, ma’am. I’m an inspector in the Guards.”
“Minogue? Clare, sure where else. You’re a Corofin Minogue now, are you?”
“Further west, ma’am. Where might your son be?”
“You must be some class of a fish then. Or a seal maybe.”
“Above Ballyvaughan, I — ”
“- There’s nothing above Ballyvaughan. Except for stones. Clouds maybe.”
“And well I know it, ma’am, from trying to coax — ”
“You’re not trying to cod me, now, are you?”
“Not a bit of it. Is your son expected home soon?”
“There was a Dan Minogue in Foreign Affairs. Are you one of his maybe?”
A headache had dulled his thinking, gutted most of his patience.
“We’re better known as the Murder Squad. But for now I’m merely — ”
“Murder? What murder? Is Sean all right?”
“Sorry, ma’am. Of course he is. It’s a different matter entirely.”
“Well God in heaven, man, you put the heart crossways in me!”
“I didn’t have the chance — ”
“All you had to do was open your mouth, sure.”
“I really need to talk to Sean, ma’am. Could I trouble you to direct me to him, as promptly now as I can ask, without giving offense.”
“He must be a cousin then,” she said. “Dan. Very direct but always civil. The nicest man you could meet. Oh, charm the birds off the trees. A real favorite with the lassies, so he was. This was during the Emergency of course.”
Minogue let out the deep breath he had been holding. He slouched in the chair and surveyed the squad room. His eyes settled on the newspaper article about Iseult.
“ DeValera, God be too good to him,” she went on, “he put a lot on Dan’s shoulders. Churchill summoned him to Downing Street in ’41. Our neutrality was an act of war to the likes of Churchill. Of course he hated anything Irish — hated it. Dev knew he’d picked the right man in Dan, of course: with the charm came the iron. Oh I can tell you it was not business as usual for Mr. Churchill that morning!”
“When would he be expected home?”
“ ‘Mr. Churchill,’ says Dan, with that lovely soft Clare accent, ‘Mr. Churchill. We feel for the plight of your people and the free peoples of Europe. We know what it is to lose our freedom, so we need ask no lessons in tyranny or freedom from you’ — ”
“Mrs. Garland, I have to ask you again if you would put me in touch with your son as soon as — ”
“‘Understand that we too have beaches, Mr. Prime Minister.’ And as if that wasn’t enough, he looks the old bulldog in the eye, without batting an eyelid: ‘Speaking for my own family, Mr. Prime Minister, I am from the west of Ireland. My uncle was shot dead in 1920 by Black and Tans. He was a farmer with fifteen acres. Now, with all the might and force you could muster to invade my country, you would still have to cross the Shannon to the west of Ireland. And there’ — ”
“Indeed, ma’am. I — ”
“Whist, will you! ‘And there,’ says Dan, ‘there you’d meet me and my family’ Never entered the minutes, needless to say Churchill almost threw a decanter at him, so he did. Oul toper, God forgive him. Hated Ireland, always. You’d be proud to claim relation with the likes of Dan Minogue! A huge funeral… ”
“I must commend you on your memory.”
“Hah,” she scoffed. “Patronizing a woman of fourscore years. I worked for Dev for thirty years. Now, that was long before the corner boys and counter jumpers insinuated themselves, you’ll understand. Long before the sloothering and shuttling off to Brussels and Strasbourg and the like, olagoning for grants and favors and handouts. Begging to be let sit with the fat boys over there, with their shiny suits and their sleek — ”