Minogue saw the object imperfectly in his side vision. He turned his head, already startled. Hoey pushed back in his chair and grasped the table-top. Naughton swallowed and cocked the hammer. The scratch and click of the metal banished any doubt from the policemen’s minds. Naughton tried to smile but Minogue saw that he couldn’t. The Inspector felt nothing. The world had stopped. Waiting. Somewhere Minogue heard a voice telling him that there was nothing he could do. Something in him struggled against this and tried to resurrect his reflexes, but his body didn’t move. Naughton’s whole attention was on the gun. His eyes were fixed on it as though it had appeared by sleight of hand, a conjuror practising, proud of his skill.
“Jesus Christ,” Minogue heard from far off. It was Hoey. Seamus Hoey’s arm came up, his fingers splayed open, a look of terror twisting his face.
“So do your duty, boys,” Naughton whispered. “And I’ll do mine.” He lifted the gun up and shoved the muzzle under his chin. His hand wavered but he redirected the gun back, shoved it under his jawbone tighter and worked his finger inside the guard. Then he yanked the trigger.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Which of you, er, puked, lads?”
The Sergeant was a slight man named Ward who wore an expensive English raincoat and a paisley tie. Minogue had been thinking of those few seconds after Naughton had dropped to the floor. The shock waves of the report in the air, the sound itself reverberating in the room and then, long after that, echoing in Minogue’s thoughts. The puff of smoke dissipated slowly. It reached Minogue’s nostrils and stung while the shouts and the gunshot continued to roar in his ears. Hoey groaned softly and held his face before drawing his hands down his cheeks. Spots of blood had been slapped on the ceiling and upper part of the wall. Several of the spots had begun to drip but then stopped, several inches down the wall. Minogue looked up again at the black spot, darker than the others, where the bullet had gone after it had exited Naughton’s head.
“Was it yourself, em, Matt?”
Minogue shook his head and looked around the parlour. He didn’t give much thought as to why Ward asked. Was it to appear exacting and professional or to taunt him while he had the chance? An ambulance blocked the window onto the street. Occasionally a head peeped around the window frame, its owner squeezing into the space left by the ambulance on the footpath. Several times Minogue heard a man’s voice telling someone to keep moving.
When the echo of the gunshot had died away, Minogue thought he had heard a sigh escape Naughton, but it was not so. For several moments the blood seemed to be the only thing that had any life there. Minogue remembered standing up weakly, dizzy even, looking for a path to the phone which would keep him out of the growing pool that spread out on the floor beneath Naughton, advancing in its own time out and down, beyond his twisted legs toward the table. Hoey said something and then began vomiting, the stream hitting the floor with force, but he stayed on his feet as he backed away. Minogue, still too bewildered to be shocked, had the sense that something had come into the room and that it was still there, a force or presence that suggested to him that it was perusing the situation, lingering even, to see if there was more it should do or effect. How the hell had Naughton come by a gun?
Hoey had trouble with his matches. His lips clenched around the cigarette were a pastel purple slash on a parchment-coloured face. Ward turned his attention to Minogue again.
“Are you sure you can… Now, I’m not suggesting that you’re not up to it, or that you can’t, no, no…”
Ward continued this unsolicited argument with himself, and he touched the bridge of his nose as if to demur.
“After all, ye’re the ones with the expertise and all-”
“I can do it,” Minogue said. “Shea can too, I imagine. Right?”
“What?” said Hoey blankly, his attention suddenly stolen by the match he had at last managed to light.
“Manage,” said Minogue. “Carry on, like.”
“Off to see her nibs?” Hoey asked. “Eilo…?”
“Well,” said Ward, “I have to tell ye now-and don’t get me wrong- but my advice is, well, leave things alone for the time being. Can’t ye get back to your business soon enough?”
Minogue looked at Hoey. “It might be better if we were to get to her before she gets news of this here, em…”
“Incident,” said Ward.
“If we stop to think about things at all, we might never get going again,” he said. “That’s about the size of it.”
“I know what you’re saying, but ye’re here as, well, not as investigating officers, more like…well…”
Minogue saw Hoey shiver once and lick his lower lip with a raspy, dry tongue.
“We’ll stay with it, I’m thinking.”
Ward shrugged and left.
“All right, Shea?” Minogue whispered.
Hoey looked up bleakly, ready to refuse. Exasperation and weariness took over his face and he closed his eyes. He pursed his lips and looked out the parlour window as the ambulance drove off the curb. Minogue could almost hear his fretting thoughts. Hoey stood and walked out the door, banging his shoulder as he crossed the threshold. Ward stood by the hall door writing in his notebook. Minogue gave him a card.
“I gave one to the first Guard. Long nose, tall…”
“Dempsey.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you later.” Ward started to say something and Minogue stopped, ready for the warning or anger he had been expecting. Did you drive an old man to this?
“There’s no way in the world we thought he was going to do it,” Minogue declared.
“And you don’t know why he…? You really don’t know?”
Minogue shook his head.
“Maybe I should have picked up on the way he was talking after the row.”
Ward frowned.
“I was too busy trying to figure out what he was saying. He had drink on him. I hadn’t a clue in the wide world he’d come up with a gun, I can tell you.”
Ward’s deep breath suggested to Minogue a conscious effort to keep his temper in check.
“Okay, okay. Just…”
“I will,” said Minogue.
Hoey was already sitting in the passenger seat. A faint smell of vomit clung to his clothes. He didn’t look Minogue in the eye.
“We didn’t do it, Shea,” Minogue repeated. “Do you hear me? He did it. He wasn’t in control of himself, for that matter.”
Hoey said nothing.
“Like it or not, it means something to us. You know what he said. We need to follow up on it. What he told us, like.”
“So what’s the plan now?” Hoey’s voice was sharp. “Where can we go to do more damage?”
“ ‘She did better out of it than she deserved.’ Do you remember him saying that?”
Hoey looked at his watch and rolled down the window. He blew smoke out and let his arm dangle over the door.
“She kept something to herself that she could have-should have- told us-”
“Why the hell should Eilo McInerny tell us anything?” Hoey snapped. “What good would it do her? Screw up her life again?”
Minogue knew enough to say nothing.
“I mean to say,” Hoey’s voice rose and he flicked the cigarette long after any ash had fallen. “Who in their right mind would talk to us? All we bring is-”
“We didn’t kill him, Shea. You’ve got to understand that-”
“All for what? Christ Almighty, we’re the kiss of death around here.”
“What Naughton said tells me that we really don’t know what happened that night. Naughton did. Or at least he knew something, and what he knew was important enough-to him at least-that he wasn’t going to tell us.”
Hoey drew on his cigarette.
“How can we walk away from it?” Minogue asked.
Hoey’s eye was smarting from the smoke when he looked at his tormentor. Again he looked at his watch, but Minogue knew it was a gesture. Tralee would take an hour and a half.