Minogue stared at the want ads. They seemed stupid now. Why did he read them every morning anyway?
“I don’t know anything about it, Kathleen. Sorry. Maybe I think it’s mi adh to be talking about it. So there. I am primitive.”
She touched his knuckles. He unclenched his fist. She fenced with her fingers before twining his in hers. Miko, the uncle singing in the fields, talking to himself at night, wandering the roads. They’d found him in his garden curled up like he was asleep by his beloved rhubarb, a smile on his face.
“We have to face it, Matt,” she whispered. “It’s nobody’s fault. Genes.”
“I’m not a nutcase, Kathleen. God knows I could be, easy enough. The job.”
“We carry things though Transmit them.”
“Look at Daithi, then? We’re opposites, aren’t we?”
Kathleen rubbed at his hand.
“We’ll see when he’s older. When he gets to be himself.”
He made to protest but she yanked on his hand.
“Come on now,” she said. “I hear it often enough from you in bed.”
Minogue studied the ingredients on the margarine lid.
“As cracked as her oul lad,” he murmured.
“You know that’s not what I meant now.”
“She thinks she’s God, Kathleen. Creation. Isn’t that what a woman thinks when she’s pregnant?”
Kathleen’s laughter turned to whoops. She let herself back in the chair. He watched the tear work its way from the eyelid’s edge down to her ear.
“Oh you’re a scream,” she said. “A panic entirely!”
“Are we quits then?”
She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. Minogue poured her more tea. She was somber now.
“God but she’s taking the hard route, Matt. What’s the matter with her?”
“Her baby will be the first baby in the world. She always starts from scratch.”
She sighed.
Minogue read an ad for piano lessons. Rates reasonable. Iseult had been going to the Wednesday recitals in the National Gallery for months now. He tried to ignore the phone ringing.
“That’s for you,” she said. The phone rang again He rose from the table.
“You’re sure, are you?”
“I told him to phone back a half an hour later. John Murtagh. I turned the phone down after I got up. You dozed off again after the alarm.”
“Kathleen…!”
“I know, I know. But I decided. He told me it could wait, that’s why.”
CHAPTER 15
Fergal Sheehy slammed down the boot lid. Raindrops flew up as it rebounded. He swore with little fervor.
“Are those your wellies there?” he asked Malone.
“I don’t have any shagging wellies. Wellies are for culchies.”
“Is that your considered opinion?” Sheehy asked. “You’re an iijit then.”
“What else did your wife’s latest fella tell you after that?”
Sheehy pushed Minogue’s overnight further back in the boot. The car stank of cigars. Sheehy, smoking after winners, Minogue wondered. He turned down the radio. Sheehy closed the boot lid with a massive slam. Malone sat in.
“What’s the matter with him?” he asked
“We’re going down the country,” Minogue said. “He’s not.”
Minogue tugged out his seat belt. Sheehy sat in heavily behind the wheel.
Minogue still believed that the sergeant took grim satisfaction in being given the headbanger parts of an investigation.
“I hope you’re not after breaking our duty free,” Malone called out.
Sheehy cocked an eye at him.
“Take me drunk lads, I’m home,” said Malone.
Sheehy crunched reverse twice before finding it. The suspension bottomed out when he sped out the gate onto the North Circular Road.
“Well shag this,” said Malone. “I’m walking.”
“Some day’s work this’ll be,” Sheehy grunted, “if this is how it’s starting.”
“The airport follow-ups,” said Minogue.
“The passenger lists,” said Sheehy. “The car park. The lookouts for stuff being fenced. Trying to trace your man’s camera and such. But that’s only the half of it.”
Minogue flicked at the zipper handle on his briefcase. Had he reminded Murtagh to phone again, see if the bank cards had showed up active yet?
“Setting up to work on Aoife Hartnett, is it?”
“God, no,” Sheehy grunted. “That’s police work That I don’t mind.”
He accelerated around a bread van through the amber light at Cabra Road.
“Ferrying you and Head-the-Ball out to fly off to Mayo, now that’s work.”
“Hey, Fergal, me oul son,” Malone broke in “Does there be a lot of muck and stuff out there? Down the country like. I don’t want to get me new Nikes dirty.”
Sheehy didn’t take the bait. He worked his way through Glasnevin and turned down Griffith Avenue. Minogue tried to pin a name on the jig that Sheehy’d began whistling. Sheehy produced a cigar at the lights by Swords Road. Minogue rolled down his window. Sheehy affected not to notice. The air was damp, with an edge to it.
“Knock International, is it?” he asked.
“That’s it. Look, Fergal. We were only codding about the duty free.”
“Ah, well that’s all right, so.”
“We’re on expenses,” said Malone. “We don’t need the duty free, like.”
Sheehy shook his head and settled into top gear for the start of the motorway.
“See how cocky you are after falling around the place there a few hours,” he said around the cigar. “In the bog. In the pissings of rain. You jackeen.”
Minogue allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation about whether Mayo was wetter than Clare. Sheehy maintained that Dublin people were climatically deprived. Malone offered that Sheehy hadn’t been crouched in a tent with the wind howling and the rain lashing the other night. Sheehy offered to exchange places with Malone on the trip to Mayo. Malone replied that he had finally been convinced that country people were far better educated than Dubs so the file work and searches would be best left to them. So, no.
Minogue tuned out more often. He thought about the Carra Fields and the bog roads around them. Five thousand years ago, Garland had told him, but it had returned to bogland by the time of the Bronze Age. With the forests down, the rain had leeched away the soil in no time at all.
“ Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmad…”* he murmured. * “Kilcais ” (Kill-cash), a poem written anonymously in the early 1700s, was a staple of school learning until very recently. It laments the destruction both of Ireland’s native forests and nobles’ houses such as Kilcais. It became generalized as a somber comment on the loss of the past and its treasures.
What shall we do for timber?
The last of the woods is down
Kilcais and the house of its glory,
The spot where that lady waited
Who shamed all women for grace
When earls came sailing to greet her
And Mass was said in the place.
Sheehy cocked an ear. There was warmth in his voice now.
“ Ta deireadh na gcoillte ar lar,
Nil tracht ar Kilcais na a theaghlach… I forget the last line.”
“ S’ni cluinfear a chluin go brach,” Minogue said. “You’re good, Fergal.”
“I bet you went through the Christian Brothers.”
“It was a truce mostly, as I recall,” Minogue said.
Traffic by the airport roundabout was light. Minogue studied the faces in the tour bus that had pulled over. American, he guessed. A maple leaf on the front window told him otherwise. Hard to tell. He looked over the fountain at the hangars on the north apron.
Sheehy was waved through the checkpoint. He pulled up by the taxi rank. Minogue blew his nose again and stepped out. Malone was pulling the bags out of the boot. A jet engine was warming up somewhere.
Sheehy looked around the roadway as though he had dropped money on it. Tired, Minogue knew, chasing leads all evening and another twelve hours of it ahead of him.
“Back tonight, do you think?” Sheehy asked.