“Thanks be to the hand of God,” he murmured. “Tom Neilon from The Clare Champion. The press is here-we’re saved. I’ll see you again?”
Minogue stood aside and studied the carpet. His thoughts staggered around, colliding into one another. Was Crossan having him on all this while? He trudged back to the table. Crossan had arrived and was talking to a wary Hoey about horse-racing, something Minogue had never heard Hoey show an interest in before. The lawyer seemed to pick up on Minogue’s mood.
“Trouble?” asked Crossan.
Minogue sat down on the edge of the chair and looked beyond Crossan’s shoulder to Sheila Howard. To an innocent eye, she was looking through a newspaper, but Minogue noted her attention directed in her side vision toward his table.
“That was a hell of a thing last night,” said Hoey to Crossan.
“Don’t be talking, man,” said Crossan. “It was wild.”
“It’s hard to imagine that whoever was doing the shooting was actually meaning to kill anybody,” Minogue said in a low voice.
“How does it change things for us?” Crossan said. “That’s what we need to decide this morning.”
The Inspector felt the resentment turn to anger as he turned to Crossan.
“There’s something I just heard which may change our approach, counsellor. Dan Howard said something to me that I wish I’d known before now. Concerns you, counsellor. Or should I say councillor?”
Minogue gave Crossan the full weight of his stare which, along with the calm tone and expression, had unnerved even the likes of Kilmartin. A screen seemed to come over Crossan’s eyes and his eyelids relaxed a little. He looked down his nose at Minogue.
“Go ahead, Guard,” he said. “And don’t stint yourself either.”
“You are interested, involved, planning, intending-whatever-to run for some public office, something in the line of politics, aren’t you?”
Crossan spoke with light-hearted whimsy. “Well, I thought I might take a run at being a town councillor here in Ennis.” He arched his eyebrows. “Do you think I’d be right for the job, now?”
“If you’re planning to waltz into public office by dragging people through the mud or, perish the thought, playing trick-of-the-loop with me, I can tell you that-”
“That I’d be the equal of any of the blackguards in politics at the moment?”
Hoey folded his arms and studied the sugar bowl.
“That you’d be a damn sight worse than them,” Minogue retorted. “You won’t be making a monkey out of me en route either, mister.”
Crossan’s eyes locked on Minogue’s.
“That’s a very harsh judgement, Your Worship. Rest assured I’ll be launching an immediate appeal.”
“That’s nothing to what will happen if I find out that you’ve been codding me here.”
“Don’t be such a gobshite, Minogue!”
The Inspector leaned forward in his chair.
“Don’t you be stupid, counsellor,” he retorted. “If I think that you inveigled us down here or concocted bits of information to suit your own ends, all as a way to run the Howards into the ditch because you have some grudges-”
“Hah! You must be the right gobshite entirely! Do you think I’m interested in making you look stupid while Dan Howard gets dirt on him, is that it?”
“Declare your interest then,” Minogue growled.
“I belong to no party. No faction, no jobs-for-the-boys, no backscratchers! No fat-arse gombeens! What I would like to do, you probably wouldn’t understand. But for the record, I plan to go for election to Ennis town council. That way, I can get houses built for poor iijits so that they won’t end up breaking-and-entering and robbing and beating the shite out of one another, and then sloothering up to my door bothering me. I want to be put out of business. So there.”
Crossan leaned in over the table and pushed aside cups and saucers. Hoey blew smoke out the side of his mouth and blinked at the Inspector. Sheila Howard glanced over as did the detective at the table next to her. Crossan waited until she had returned to her newspaper and then he spoke behind his hands.
“They’re trying to derail you with this case-”
“This is not ‘a case,’” Minogue snapped. “And, for that matter, it wouldn’t take much this morning, with you trying to hang some class of a Chappaquiddick around Howard’s neck.”
“Don’t walk away from it now,” said Crossan.
“What are we walking away from? Except for finding out that people did stupid things. Guards included.”
Crossan pointed at the table as if explaining a route on a map.
“Lookit,” he said, “Jamesy Bourke is dead. Whatever life he had before that was torn away from him by the State. Jane Clark went back to where she came from little more than a bucketful of cinders.”
“And you want to tar-and-feather the Howards and a few Guards on the head of it?” Minogue asked.
“Are you going to ignore what we’ve discussed? Bourke’s trial?” Crossan raised his hands. “Can you? Do you think for one minute that I’d sit here telling you this if I didn’t believe in what I was doing?” He looked to Hoey as though he were a judge considering an appeal.
“Don’t look at me,” Hoey murmured. “I’m from Galway.”
Crossan turned his attention back to Minogue again. He spat out the words in a harsh whisper.
“You’re backing away from your own instincts. Covering for your pals beyond in the Garda Station. For all I heard about you, Minogue, now I know you’re a quitter.”
“Oh, so you did some research, did you, before you put out the bait?”
“Yes, I did-I freely admit it. It was too good a thing to pass up when your nephew hired me. I began to think you weren’t the common-or-garden cop so then I thought well, this must be meant to happen. The fates had turned kind to Jamesy for once in his bloody existence!” Crossan sat back, his eyes still blazing.
“But what I had underestimated was the degree to which Guards will cover up for one another.”
“I do not,” said Minogue. “So shut up throwing things at me. I have enough lumps on me head from pulling down things off high shelves, things I didn’t know were so damned heavy and awkward when I got the notion to take a look at them.”
“What is it, then?” Crossan pursued him. “Is it frightened you are after last night?”
“I think differently about the Howards after last night.” Minogue heard the defensive tone in his own voice. “So I don’t much like you sitting in their house, slashing away at them, in however clever a manner.”
“Hah,” Crossan growled, and sat back with an expression of disbelief. His eyes widened in glee and he glared at Minogue.
“You like her nibs, do you?” He nodded toward Sheila Howard but kept his eyes on Minogue. “And the heroic Dan standing steadfast here in outlaw country and won’t be intimidated? Our Clare Camelot, by Christ!”
Minogue said nothing but returned Crossan’s look with the policeman’s neutral observation of a specimen.
“Heroes, is it?” Crossan went on. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first to fall under her spell, so you wouldn’t. Dan the man owes half his success to her. Twice the man he’ll ever be. He has the charm and the rest of it but she’s the backbone of the operation. Make no mistake, Minogue. The Howards are going places. ‘She’ll drive Dan to the Park,’ they say here. And that’s his supporters saying that behind their hands, too.”
A cease-fire arrived in the form of the waitress who began unloading plates. Hoey might be right, the Inspector reflected. Get the hell out of the way of whatever was going to happen in the wake of last night’s shooting. Leave County Clare to the brick-faced gymnasts and ditch-crawlers with their submachine pistols and their souped-up, prowling Granadas.
“Don’t be rehashing public house gossip about the Howards to me,” Minogue murmured. “The Howards can do what they want.”