“Take the back, then,” Minogue said.
Hoey slammed the passenger door hard. Minogue strode in the door of the Central Hotel. His heart began to beat faster. He dodged a somnolent lounge-boy who tacked across his path.
The receptionist’s perfume met Minogue ten feet ahead of her desk.
“Oh, hello,” she smiled, and put down the telephone. “You’re back. Would you be-”
Minogue flattened his hands on the counter and leaned in over it.
“Eilo McInerny. Where is she?”
The receptionist’s smile faded, rallied and faded even faster when she met Minogue’s eyes. She screwed on the lid of the nail polish.
“Well, now, let me think.”
“Is she working now?”
“Well, if she’s in…this is the afternoon…she’d be somewhere near the dining-room, probably, helping set it up for-”
Minogue strode to the french doors and opened them. A teenaged girl with short dyed hair stopped setting a table and looked over at him. He didn’t stop to close the door but said Eilo McInerny’s name to the waitress. The girl stepped back and nodded toward a swing door behind a counter at the back of the dining-room. He kept moving and pushed open the door. In the kitchen now, he saw a white tunic move between a counter-top and hanging pots that obscured the face.
“Is Eilo McInerny here?” he said, rounding the counter.
Under the lopsided chef’s hat, which reminded Minogue of a wayward cartoon rabbit, was a watery-eyed man in his forties. The chef’s eyes darted toward a stained, stainless-steel cabinet next to a collection of buckets. He stepped out into Minogue’s path.
“Who’s asking?”
“A Guard, that’s who. Step aside, mister.”
He heard a movement next to the buckets, and he skipped around the cabinet. Eilo McInerny was on her feet, her magazine on the floor. She stepped on her cigarette and brushed at her skirt. For a few seconds her eyes continued to betray her fright. Minogue spotted the tumbler, half-hidden by the door of the cabinet which had been held open to hide a chair.
“You again. I never expected to see you back.”
Minogue came to a sharp stop and stared hard at her.
“Matter of fact, I told you and what’s the other one, the pasty-faced silent type with the black eyes, get lost and leave me alone.”
Minogue looked over his shoulder at the chef and then back at Eilo McInerny.
“I was talking to someone that used to know you. Back in Portaree. In the old days.”
“Fuck off with yourself,” she said.
“I want to pass on to you what he told us,” Minogue continued.
She threw her head back but she couldn’t shake free of what her darting eyes told the Inspector.
“Go to hell. I don’t have to do anything.” Drinking, Minogue decided, but that wouldn’t stop him.
“We can have this out in front of your fella here, Mr Cordon Bleu, or-”
“He’s not my fella.”
“Or we can call for a squad car and do the job right.”
“You’re talking shite,” she scoffed. “Take it away with you.”
“Naughton. Garda Tom Naughton. You remember him, don’t you?”
Eilo McInerny shifted on her feet and folded her arms. Her eyes narrowed.
“Let’s talk somewhere,” said Minogue.
“There’s a crowd coming in from an office for a retirement do.”
Minogue returned the chef’s gaze.
“Come on, Eilo, before I have to have you hauled out of here.”
She shook her head once and made for a door by a set of sinks.
“I’ll be back in good time, Tom,” she said.
“No hurry,” said the chef. His limp, glistening eyes followed Minogue. Hoey opened the door as she put out her hand.
“Jesus,” she started, and stepped back on Minogue’s toe. “Where the hell did you come out of? You look wicked.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hoey muttered. They followed him to a door that led into an alley.
“Any fags?” she asked. “I left mine back in the kitchen.”
Minogue opened the passenger door of the Fiat first, turned the ignition. Hoey extended his packet and she plucked one before she sat in the car. She coughed with the first drag of the Major and her shudders and gasps shook the car. Minogue adjusted the heater.
“Christ,” she wheezed. “No wonder you’re so skinny. Coffin nails.”
She looked contemptuously at her cigarette and took another drag on it. Minogue leaned against his door and turned to her.
“You sold us a pup the last time, Eilo. Now I want to hear the bits you left out. No messing either.”
“What the hell can I tell you except what I done already?”
“Smarten yourself up, Eilo. I’m not codding.” Minogue waved away the smoke billowing from her cigarette. He saw the look of worry pass across her face before she recovered the pout. She looked out the window.
“You’re not codding,” she murmured.
“Tom Naughton said you did better out of Portaree than you deserved. What did he mean?”
“Ask him, why don’t you?” she muttered.
Hoey cleared his throat before he spoke. “Tom Naughton blew his own brains out not four hours ago. Right in the middle of talking to us.”
She looked away from the window to Hoey and blinked.
“So we’re not in the humour of playing games here now,” said Minogue. “You’ll appreciate.”
His words seemed to have no effect on her. She stared right through Hoey.
“Look, Eilo, this is what he told me. I’m not going to hold anything back. You have to know we’re not trying to trap you into anything or play off what you say against anything else.”
She let the smoke out of the corners of her lips, like white paint poured into a slow eddy of water.
“You knew Naughton, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I knew him, all right.”
She had spoken in a voice so soft that, for a moment, Minogue wondered if she were the same woman he had confronted not five minutes ago. He knew that she believed them now because her eyes shone with hatred and joy.
“Everything comes to them that wait,” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
She ignored Hoey’s question. “I always heard that and I believed it, too. I prayed for that to happen a thousand times. Everything comes around again.”
She let out a mouthful of smoke but, like a waterfall reversed, she snorted it back into her nose. Then she blew out the smoke. The ferocity slid away off her eyes and her gaze dropped to the dashboard.
“So Naughton did for himself, did he,” she muttered. “Well, by Jesus, there’s a cure for everything.”
“You got something out of your time in Portaree,” said Minogue.
“You fucking iijit!” she lashed out suddenly. “I got heartache and misery!”
“And what did Naughton have to do with that?”
“He was like the rest of them, only worse. He was the Guard. He should have been on my side.”
“In what?” Hoey asked.
“He knew I was telling the truth. With that dirty smirk on his face.”
“He knew what?”
“He knew what they were like, Tidy Howard and the rest of them. Oul’ goats like him. Hah. Tidy towns and clean streets. There’s a joke like you never heard before, mister. They all sat and talked with one another too, I can tell you. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Tidy and Doyle and Naughton, sitting in the parlour after they had cleared the shop. ‘Eilo! Make up a bit of something! Eilo! Run up a sandwich for the Guards here now!’ One o’clock in the morning sometimes, can you credit that? Sure Howard had them in his pocket-”
“Wait a minute,” said Minogue. “What do-”
“Ah, you’re not that much of a thick, are you? The Guards’d come by the odd night to make sure we weren’t serving drink after hours. They’d make a big fuss about clearing the pub and the rest of it. Then they’d go behind the counter and start up gargling themselves. Tidy knew what nights they’d be in, so for every one night they’d show up, there’d be weeks and weeks of him pouring drinks up to twelve o’clock.”
“That’s the size of it then?”