Minogue stared him down. The man slapping tickets on windscreens on Molesworth Street needed more coaxing than Minogue thought fair for a senior Garda detective with a hangover.
He skipped across Dawson Street with his eyeballs jiggling up and down in their sockets in a way that surprised and appalled him. He arrived on Grafton Street almost in time to be crushed by a milk delivery lorry. He hadn’t a leg to stand on when the driver called him a fucking yob: the street wasn’t pedestrian only for another hour. Bewleys offered him no comfort this morning. The nod from Kevin Kelly, an enormous, sweaty, and good-natured ex-soldier turned floor man, seemed guarded, solemn even.
“What’s the story there, Matt.”
“This is an awful town, Kevin. How’re Theresa and the kids keeping?”
“Top form. Thanks. Jasmin’s into the art still.”
Minogue hammered on the lift button again. Kelly’s face turned grave.
“Saw her looking at her dinner the other day, but. Very strange look on her face.”
“That a fact now, Kevin.”
“Yeah. Asked me if we have any pictures of the Holy Family anywhere.”
Minogue knew better than to expect any trace of humor on the Dublmer’s face.
“Go easy there, Kevin.”
“What are you hammering on that button for? The lift is bollocksed.”
Minogue sighed and looked up through the metalwork.
“You better not be having me on, Kevin.”
“Where are you off to in anyhow? You’re a Main Floor man.”
“The museum.”
“Well you’re late then, aren’t you.”
“I should give you another dig for that. What are you saying?”
“Party of five gone up ahead of you. Two women, a teenager, a girl. Looked important enough. Even without the two heavies.”
Minogue put his foot on the first step. Four flights, a sore head
“Two of ours, is it?”
Kevin nodded.
“Unless everyone in town is walking around with radios and shooters tucked in the back of their trousers.”
Kevin Kelly cleared his throat and tugged at his shirt cuffs. He had risen to corporal before jumping ship.
“Tell them not to look so shagging shifty, Matt.”
Minogue stepped aside to allow a wheezing bedraggled man down the steps. Kelly moved in and grasped the elderly man under the arm.
“Heard a strange thing.”
Minogue looked away from the busker setting up across the street from the restaurant. He noted the excessive care Kevin was taking with the old man.
“You’re being fitted up for something ”
Minogue looked around at the passing faces.
“Your outfit I mean. The job.”
Kelly had a big smile for a young woman carrying an armful of books. He spoke out of the side of his mouth.
“Well, am I right?”
“Kevin, I can’t be doing business here now.”
“Don’t be so bloody contrary, will you. Bernard, my lad, well one of his mates was in a pub there last week. Some of the Smith crowd were there; hangers-on ”
Kelly’s face suddenly gave way to a smile and a wink at a couple. Minogue remembered that it was Kevin Kelly’s size and charm that had allowed Bewleys to stay open late for several years now.
“Anyway. He overheard some talk. There was something mentioned, something about ‘quits.’ Oh sure, pub talk. But he’s in tight enough with the Smiths, Bernard says.”
Minogue glanced at Kelly’s beefy hands adjusting his tie. He must work hard to keep the belly in, he decided.
“What kind of ‘quits’?”
“Something serious.”
“Like using a Garda squad car at Griffith Avenue for target practice?”
“Might be connected, I don’t know. I’m only passing it on.”
“Any name?”
Kelly shook his head.
“A friend of a friend — and all that. There’s no comeback on it. Just something I heard thirdhand.”
“All right, Kevin. Thanks.”
“Now I’m not a tout, for Jases’ sake. Okay? But if I hear more, I’ll let you know. If it’s the Smiths, you better be wide awake, that’s all I’m saying. They’re bigger than even the Guards know. I’m telling you. They don’t care, some of them. You know?”
Minogue took his time on the stairs. He waited by the hallway leading to the museum cafe for a minute to get his breath. Kilmartin couldn’t have picked a better time to be on a fortnight’s jaunt in the States. Had he known? He thought of Tynan. The commissioner had spoken to him more in the past few days than in the past six months. Chess, moving pieces to gain advantage. He rubbed hard at his eyes to try to clear the suspicion and anger surging up into his thoughts.
“You’d qualify as a prominent person, Mrs. Shaughnessy,” he said. “ ‘It’s better to be safe…’ is the approach, I imagine now.”
Minogue looked at the detective who had been eyeing the doorway, the bored-looking one with the skimpy beard and the polo shirt under his leather jacket.
“Could I trouble you to set us up with a cup of something here?”
A pause and a blink before he nodded. Minogue exchanged a look with the older detective.
“You won’t mind if Mrs. Shaughnessy and I were to chat alone there over in the corner?”
The coffee was too hot. The detective slid the change onto the table. A fifty-penny coin rolled to the edge and fell to the floor. He took a seat near the door. Minogue picked up the coin. The only other clients, a couple with wire-rimmed glasses and hair so blond Minogue believed it could be dyed, were exchanging maps and sheets of paper at a table by the counter.
“They’re certainly different from the Guards I knew,” Mrs. Shaughnessy said. “Hard to tell they’re Guards at all really.”
“That’s the idea, I think.”
“Are they armed?”
Minogue nodded. She looked away.
“On bicycles, I remember,” she murmured. “Armed only with their tongues. Little enough for them to do back then of course. How things change.”
From what airy suite Geraldine Shaughnessy had been summoned to be told of her son’s death, he wondered. He imagined a city skyline at night, all glass and pastel carpet, a piano. -
“I do appreciate all that you’re doing,” she said “Especially this now. I dreaded the thought of going to a Garda station to… I’m embarrassed, really.”
Minogue smiled. Fifty, looked thirty-five — if even. Girlish yet: coltish, was that a word? He couldn’t tell if she had makeup. The freckles were scattered sparsely along the back of her hands. Her eyes were bloodshot, the lids pink and tight-looking. He wondered if she’d tell him that Johnny Leyne was in hospital. Maybe she didn’t know herself. Hardly.
“Can you tell me if you have anything new on, what’s happened?”
N-oo: nooze. Her native Cork accent clicked handily with American.
“I can tell you what we know, but it’s far from being anything we can seize on as a solution.”
She studied the tabletop while she listened. Her eyes didn’t rest on Minogue when she looked up. He noted her hand shaking on the cup. Her eyes were glassy now. She didn’t reach for a handkerchief. She wasn’t going to try drinking the rest of her coffee. The German or Dutch or Swedish couple decamped. That could have been the real color of their hair, he decided. He watched the bearded detective adjust something under his arm. Surly young fella: like to pin him someday, wise him up to manners.
A woman with a stream of white hair down her back entered the restaurant. The two detectives exchanged a glance. Mrs. Shaughnessy asked Minogue to repeat words. Place-names and people. Did she want to take notes maybe? She thanked him but no. He began to feel terrible for her. Alone she seemed, composed and dazed and polite and refined. She began to roll a thin silver bracelet up and down over her wrist. He took a delicate line on the cause of death. She stopped tugging on her bracelet.
“As a result of…?”
Pale enough to start with, he believed she seemed to have shrunk since they sat down. He lowered his voice.
“There’d have been blood loss. I think the doctor would describe it as shock.”