“What’s so funny?”
“The bit about married people.”
Hoey’s tone suggested irritation as well as embarrassment. “Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?”
Minogue started up the Fiat to distract himself from laughing again. Hoey lit another cigarette, coughed and rolled down the window. A lorry towing a trailer full of pigs stopped next to the car. Their trotters scrambling on the wood, their squeals and the smell of pig shit made Hoey roll up the window again. The lorry moved off slowly. Minogue drove around the corner and switched off the engine.
“What’s the matter?” said Hoey.
“Have to think out loud for a minute. That night: Eilo’s working and she sees Dan Howard and Jamesy Bourke drunk in the bar. She remarks to herself that there’s a lot of drink in front of Bourke. Later on she remembers seeing Sheila Hanratty and her friends. Then Eilo’s off about the place, ‘working’-which means she went out to a storehouse for a smoke and a drink from a bottle of vodka she kept out there. She sees Sheila Hanratty come across the yard after Tidy Howard and they’re arguing. Naturally she hides. She doesn’t hear what they’re squabbling about but she’s surprised that Sheila Hanratty should be shouting at Dan Howard’s father.”
“But she does hear one thing that Tidy shouts at her: ‘You live your life, I’ll live mine.’”
“And some bad language from the both of them. Surprised her to hear Sheila Hanratty like that. Had the name of being well-reared.”
“Right. Sheila Hanratty walks off in a huff. Eilo is able to get out of her hidey-hole, and she goes back in to help clear the bar. She follows Sheila Hanratty.”
Hoey nodded.
“And the same Sheila Hanratty goes through the bar and straight out the door onto the street.” Minogue looked to Hoey for comment but his colleague merely considered the tip of his cigarette.
“This is half-ten, now,” Minogue went on. “There’s another hour before the pub closes. Come closing-time, Eilo sees that she’s back, and she’s in a buzz around the boyos up at the bar. The same boyos are well and truly pissed by this time. Pretty soon afterwards they’re out on the street and Sheila Hanratty drives Dan home.”
“Right,” murmured Hoey. “The Howards didn’t live above the place.”
“Here’s my question: If Dan Howard can’t leg it the half-mile or so back to his house, how can Jamesy Bourke walk as far as Jane Clark’s cottage? If Bourke is as far gone as Dan Howard, don’t you know.”
“I don’t know,” Hoey offered. “Nobody knows. Bourke himself didn’t know.”
“Back away from that for a minute. How do we know that Sheila Hanratty actually went anywhere after her kerfuffle with Tidy Howard? Eilo says she saw her go out the door. Just assumed she got into the car. But she might have driven around the corner and come back to the bar directly. She might have gone to get something in the car. Her handbag or something. Then again, she might have been upset or the like, and needed…”
The thought of Sheila Howard distraught over something, using bad language, gave Minogue a feeling of faint but not unpleasant aversion.
“She might have come back in a matter of minutes. Eilo mightn’t have seen her until later,” Hoey was saying.
“Yes.” Minogue was still mired in his sliding thoughts.
“Then again,” Hoey added with unmistakable irony, “it’d be nice to know where she actually did go, and for how long.”
Minogue awakened to Hoey’s mood and glanced across at him.
“Yes and no, Shea. There’s Crossan taking digs at the Howards. I’m far from satisfied that Crossan is as pure as the driven snow here. He may be the happier man to see Dan Howard and Sheila Howard with plenty of mud on them.”
“You’re lumping Eilo McInerny in there too?”
“It struck me that there’d be a certain, what can I call it, a certain relish that Eilo’d enjoy if the Howards, Sheila Howard included, got in the way of scandal.”
“You think she’s a muck-raker.”
“That’s not what I said. I’m saying that she could put a cast on her recollections. I’m wondering…I’m wondering exactly what Crossan told her the times he was talking to her recently. Maybe Crossan sort of enlisted her-not outright hired her, I mean, but-”
“Crossan? You don’t believe her, then.”
“I’m saying that she might be embellishing. She didn’t actually hear the conversation between Tidy Howard and Sheila Hanratty. And she didn’t actually see her drive off, much less where.”
“All right,” said Hoey. He blew out under his upper lip. “All right. But she didn’t claim to have seen or heard everything.”
The afternoon sun was just above the rooftops now, and the copper hint of evening was already on the streets. The sun had warmed the car’s interior and brought up the smell of cigarette ash even stronger. Hoey had become more fidgety.
“Crossan,” said Hoey. “You’ve got him in your sights, haven’t you?”
Minogue nodded.
“Back to the money thing, then,” Hoey tried. “She says that Tidy Howard gave her money for the train and then for digs over in London. A lot of money. Maybe because he had her on his conscience?”
“Take-it-or-leave-it type of deal?” said Minogue.
“Right. He rapes her and then later he kicks her out after throwing a bit of money at her. But the way she talks about him, it wasn’t in character for him to give a damn about that sort of thing. Why did he wait until after that night to talk her into going away?”
“Bears out her version of why she got the money, all right.”
“Yeah. The main reason was that she knew that something was going on that night,” said Hoey. He sat forward and began counting on his fingers.
“Look. She sees Tidy Howard and Sheila Hanratty having some kind of row. Sheila storms out, obviously not getting the answer she wants. She goes somewhere. When Eilo sees her again, she’s back in the bar looking a lot less glamorous than the first time she appeared. We have to go after her. Sheila Howard.”
Minogue took a deep breath and looked at his watch. “With what?”
“Naughton got paid off-”
“Can’t prove a damn thing now, and you know it.”
Minogue’s shirt-collar began to irritate his neck. The sun came around the door-pillar. There was a glint in Hoey’s eyes and his fingers moved the cigarette around quickly.
“Ask Mr and Mrs Howard,” he growled. “Round two. This time put the squeeze on ’em.”
Minogue longed for a cup of coffee, to be alone for a while. A vague apprehension had taken the place of the emptiness, itself part of the leftovers of shock. Hoey scratched his bottom lip with his thumbnail. The Inspector slid deeper into his seat and looked down the street.
The afternoon light had stretched the shadows across the street. They had begun their relentless ascent on the buildings to the western side. Soon the roofs, the aerials and the chimneys would take the glare all to themselves and the street below would fall into darker shadow. Gold and bronze had already taken fire in several windows. Minogue watched a mother pushing her pram toward the car. Her face was set firm as if she had just had news that disappointed her. She stopped the pram and called out to a boy crying on the footpath behind her. The boy stood staunchly with his face contorted.
“All right so, bye-bye,” the woman called out.
She was too tired to be really angry, Minogue believed. The child continued crying and pivoted toward a parked car. He began fingering a door handle, tracing patterns in the dust on the door panels. His Hallowe’en costume had held together well, the Inspector noted. The cloak’s high collar suggested Dracula but perhaps he was mistaking it for Superman or Batman. Would this stubborn child insist on wearing his hero’s clothes night and day until they fell off in flitters?
“I’ll layve you here in the street, so I will, if and you don’t come on!” the mother shouted. She had rested one hand on her hip, the other laying the handle of the pram.
“All right, then! Bye-bye.” The child wailed and sat down heavily.