"Where'd you get the car?"
"I swear to God," Duffy began. The voice, his voice, resonated through his skull. He was sure it was someone else's voice. He knew what he wanted to say, but his hearing wasn't picking up what he thought the voice was saying.
"… I came down on the train is all. That's all. I was told to meet the others at a hotel."
"What hotel?"
"The Bur… the Burg. The Burlington."
"When?"
"The day before yesterday, yes."
"Who told you?"
"I just got a phone call. A fella phoned."
"Where did you meet these two before?"
"As true as God, I never did. They're from Belfast."
Vaguely, Duffy wondered if he could control what he was saying. It was like being stoned-you didn't know if you said it or just thought it. He understood he had to keep the shared illusion about the other two being caught. He doubted they'd be taken. They were hard men and they were wanted, so they had little enough to lose. They had made him nervous the way they hardly said a word all day.
"All I know," the voice continued," is that they told me to lose that patrol car. I remember we ran into a dead end and they jumped out of the car. I remember them shooting. And me trying to get out the door on my side. I was half-way out. I was lucky not to get me leg sliced off so I was."
"What were you at this afternoon?"
Duffy hesitated. Like a magnetic force, he could feel the closeness of the cop behind him. His skin tickled alarms.
"I think it was a bank job. The boys was bored."
"Where?"
"Cruising is all. They never told me anything, as true as…"
"Where have you been staying?"
"At that hotel. Same as them," Duffy added.
A light knock at the door. Plain clothes opened it. Galvin left the room. He closed the door gently behind him.
In the hallway, the Special Branch man whispered,
"No sign of them or the guns. We think they got out of the area right away."
"This yo-yo says they're Belfast and that's all he knows. They'll be headed back into the city now. They were staying at the Burlington so set the place up overnight anyway, though I doubt it. Get in first and have a look around. Remember who you're dealing with. They might have handguns."
"What about your man inside?"
Galvin stroked his chin.
"Ah, he's only a dummy. He's not trained at all. He has the willies with Moroney in there."
"We have the check-points up on the Bray Road and Merrion Road. Nothing yet. We're starting the house-to-house about now," the Special Branch man said.
And there'll be nothing from the check-points either if that little shitebird is telling the truth, Galvin added silently. Hard men.
"Set up something for this fella in the Bridewell, would you. They can't keep him here. We'll be done with him in a few minutes. For the moment anyway. Make sure the door-to-door thing is kept up. And I want every house on our lists visited by a policeman tonight, especially on the south side of the city. Sympathisers, politicos, hangers-on, I don't give a shite. Show the flag. They'll know that they can't hide out there."
"Yes, sir."
"And get a bit of first aid for this fecker in here. Maybe a concussion or eardrums. Don't take any guff out of him. He fell down a few times and hurt himself."
"Yes, sir."
When Galvin re-entered the room, Duffy looked over to him. Duffy was hunched over in the chair. The room smelled bad. It was hot now.
"Duffy. In between now and the time we see you again, you have some thinking to do. You should opt for self-preservation if you have any savvy at all. Your mates are in the same boat. And here's something else to dwell on while you still have fond memories of my colleagues here. Your outfit will be told that you're singing away here, so you'll have to square it with them in the clink when you get there. Who knows, we mightn't have you alive enough after that to hang you anyway. Doesn't matter what you say. We have the finger on plenty of your lads here and all we have to do is lift a few of them and drop your name, Volunteer Duffy. You don't know the half of it. Start remembering quick. You're up to your oxters now so all you can do is buy your way into some kind of protective custody. And even that won't mean much unless we see our way to some allowances later on. Remember: you killed a Garda officer. We can have you looking like a Hallowe'en mask at the end of a rope."
Moroney saw the wariness in the prisoner's eyes. The side of his head was swolleiralready and there was a drying film of blood at the corners of his mouth. Galvin felt a final rush of contempt for this pathetic fool. He thinks he has one up on us because we're codding him about his cronies being in custody, Moroney reflected. No training. Maybe it'd never dawn on him how suggestion worked. We know that he thinks he knows, that's the control. Moroney believed Duffy would get his story in soon enough. He also believed that it wouldn't amount to much.
"Get this worm out of here," Moroney said.
CHAPTER TEN
Minogue felt it was taking him forever to reach the shopping centre. His mind was cluttered with dark forms whose details escaped him as he tried to concentrate. He felt cold and he felt old. Maybe this is how it is when you lose your nerve, or when you let yourself admit you've lost your nerve, he thought.
Minogue parked his Fiat two rows away from the supermarket. He checked his pocket for money. He stopped walking and stood between parked cars, fingering coins to the side of his palm. The air was thick and moist around him. He pocketed his find and resumed walking. An expanse of glass confronted him beyond the rows of parked cars. He could see himself, head and shoulders above the car roofs as he stepped out onto the roadway. He felt damp and creaky out of the car. The sky was low, greyed and browned. He smelled a faint diesel scent hanging in the air. In the gutter ahead of him lay a discarded umbrella, like a broken bird. He stepped across rainbowed splashes of petrol now quite prominent after the rain.
Ahead of him, his figure became larger. This is how I must look to other people, he realised. People were moving behind the reflections in the glass. He heard the baskety metal clash of the shopping carts shoved away. Minogue thought of Debussy. Music under water, shimmering. Everything slow. Iseult had taken Kathleen and himself to a recital in the Art Gallery some weeks after he had come out of the hospital. Minogue had been astounded at what he had heard. He was sure the doctor had been wrong about the hearing loss. There in the hall, with the musicians warming up, the sounds had been like a dream. They walked toward the great hall, Minogue hardly feeling his feet move under him, quite lost to the gathering sounds which washed over and enveloped him. Was that what it was like when you kicked up your heels and your soul took off? Like a big underwater cave and everything changed and shining.
Silly to be thinking of Agnes McGuire and that at the same time. And then that young Guard in the car, dead now, just like that, like he never lived, another gravestone being made, an editorial on the outrage. What was the use of it all?
To Minogue's left, a movement between cars caught his eye. Ahead of him, the glass was now a darkening mirror. Rows of cars to his left and right in the mirror. Minogue wondered if he should go to a record shop later. A flicker of movement registered in Minogue's unconcern. He stepped over a worn yellow line. Debussy was like breathing under water, so it was. Minogue was vaguely aware of a soft hiss of tires on the tarmac. As if you could swim next to the dolphins and go into coral caves. Minogue realised that he was not surrounded by cars anymore. In a ridiculous second, he was standing on the strand in Lahinch, again a child, with the ebbing tide pulling the grains away from under him. He'd feel the tug and he'd turn and realise how far away the others were. All the way to Boston, Mam said as she pointed out over the waves.