The passenger laid the pistol on the floor and covered it with newspaper. To his astonishment, his anger had vanished. In its place was an overpowering feeling that he had lost something. It brought an ache of regret and hope to his chest. The driver picked up on the change in his friend and he returned his hand to the wheel.
“Come on now, let’s not be bickering,” he murmured. “We have to look out for one another, hah? Come on, now. We’ve always done it, haven’t we? It’s me and you, Ciaran.”
It was a sorrow he hadn’t felt since childhood, that sense of injustice and things going irretrievably astray which caused the passenger’s eyes to sting. What was the point, he thought. He couldn’t fight this. Spain. He knew then that tomorrow he’d be thinking about it all again. Maybe even Germany, work a few years away from all this, get a stake and buy a house back home. He thought about her then and that familiar turbulence began in his stomach. What would she do?
“Well?” said the driver.
“Shut up awhile, can’t you?” he mumbled. “And just fucking drive.”
“That’s right,” said Minogue, and reached for his cup.
“Up in Dublin,” Crossan added.
“That’s how it looks,” said the Inspector. He adopted a patient tone which he hoped the barrister would decode.
“So when I find out where, I’ll be talking to her.”
Hoey dropped a depleted ice-cube into his mouth and crunched it.
“You’ll let me know, so,” said Crossan.
“You may rely on it,” said Minogue with a heavier emphasis.
“Is there going to be an internal Garda investigation about Naughton?”
“We’re back off to Dublin tomorrow,” said Minogue. “Until I find out what Sheila Howard tells me this time around, I don’t know about any internal investigation.”
“But what Naughton told you about the fire suggests there was some kind of collusion going on,” said Crossan.
Minogue laid down his cup with a solid thud. “Collusion isn’t a term we should be throwing around here now.”
“Yet, you mean,” Crossan tossed in. “Step back a minute and look at what we have. Fact: Eilo McInerny was paid money to leave Ireland. Fact: We cannot account for key people the night of the fire. Fact: Naughton had a nice fat pad to his pension. Fact: Naughton knew plenty about that night, more than he was willing to tell you. Fact: Naughton killed himself out of some sense of duty or loyalty,”-he paused and looked from Minogue to Hoey-“to someone or something. It’s time to raise dust here, I say. Make it official. Time for your ‘inquiry’ to grow up into a proper investigation.”
Hoey looked up at the ceiling and blew smoke toward a lampshade.
“I think we need to talk to her first.” Minogue realised that his words had betrayed something. “I mean that I need to assess how, er, Eilo McInerny’s allegations may affect the situation and so on.”
“Aha,” Crossan barked. “Allegations. We have allegators now, do we? Maybe we’re getting somewhere now.”
Trapped, Minogue floundered further. He heard his words sound an ignominious retreat into the formal, public language of a policeman. He did not look at Hoey as he spoke.
“I don’t need to remind you that this is a delicate matter. We’re obliged to respect the parties’ rights. Things must remain as allegations-”
“Naughton blew his brains out,” said Crossan.
“-while we sift through what’s to be had in the line of information-”
“Are you or aren’t you going to press for a full investigation when you confer with your, em, colleagues?”
Minogue took a few seconds to absorb Crossan’s sarcasm.
“I give my word that I-we’ll-keep you as fully informed as we possibly can.”
He waited for another dig from the lawyer but none came. Crossan’s gaze lingered on him, but then he swept it away. The waitress timed a visit to coincide with the truce.
“No, thanks,” Minogue said, and held his hand over the glass. “Put it all on the one bill, if you please.”
“I can’t be bought off,” said Crossan. His voice had lost its edge, the Inspector noted. “But that’s not to say that you shouldn’t try again with other blandishments.”
Minogue decided it was time for a Parthian shot.
“You can return the favour if you carry an election sometime in the future, counsellor. Only as long as it’s won fair and square.”
“Oh, the sting off that,” said Crossan, regaining some vigour. “Dublin hasn’t softened your tongue as regards digs.”
The drowsiness was heavy across Minogue’s chest now, cocooning and holding him fast in the chair in Ennis, County Clare. The curtains were drawn in the dining-room. Half-seven. Should he have tried to drive back to Dublin instead of sitting to a dinner with Crossan? All the lawyer had done was to grill him about why he wasn’t doing what Crossan himself thought needed done. Even Hoey was looking askance at his judgement. If he closed his eyes, he’d nod off, he believed.
“You’ll be in touch,” said the lawyer.
The smell of a fry woke Minogue. His whole body ached. He felt as if he were anchored to the bed, like Gulliver pinned. Is this what a stroke does, he wondered, and thought of Tidy Howard. The mattress was too soft, and he had rolled into a hollow where he had been boiled by a heavy eiderdown into a state of sweaty, aching immobility. Ten to nine, he saw on his watch. And he had worried that he was too wound up to sleep.
He struggled to sit up in bed. A fragment of a dream slid by him before he could see it clearly: a fire, he knew, but… He rubbed at his eyes for a full minute. Then he picked up his watch again and strapped it on. He had slept for eleven hours. He remembered that Mrs McNamara had kept him talking through the news when Hoey and he had come in last night. He had phoned Kathleen, he recalled, and had done a good job of editing out the greater part of the day’s proceedings.
He drew the curtains back a little. For a moment he wondered if he were still asleep and dreaming. As his eyes became used to the light he could make out the looming forms in the fog beyond Mrs McNamara’s tidy, wet garden. He dressed and packed his bag. At least he’d get to steal into Bewleys in Dublin today. He knocked on Hoey’s door but there was no answer. He opened the door to find Hoey’s bed made. His toothbrush, several packets of Majors and pieces of folded paper were on a dressing table. One of them was an airmail envelope with jagged paper by the opened flap. He closed the door and headed for the parlour. Mrs McNamara’s head inclined out the kitchen door to intercept him.
“Come in,” she called out. “I thought I heard someone stirring.”
“Hello, missus. Is there any sign of the other lad?”
“Oh, Seamus?” she beamed. Mrs McNamara was holding a spatula aslant across her chest. “He’s gone out, so he is.”
Minogue followed her into the kitchen. A stirring in a chair by the Aga drew his eyes to an elfin figure sitting next to the range. The old woman looked out over her hands, which rested on the handle of a blackthorn walking-stick, and issued a myopic smile. Were there more dwarfs hiding about the house? He turned to greet the old woman.
“Good day to you, ma’am.”
“And yourself, now,” she croaked back.
The Inspector turned back to Mrs Mac.
“Excuse me now, but did he say where he was going?”
“He went out to get sausages. Such a memory I have, I didn’t have a sausage in the house and he offered to go out.”
Maybe gone AWOL to get a bloody half-bottle of whiskey or something. He turned to head back to the hallway.
“Ah, sit down, can’t you? He’ll be back in a minute.” Mrs McNamara’s voice began to go up. “Sure he’s only gone a few minutes.” She pushed Minogue toward the old woman. Maybe he’d pushed Hoey too hard or something?
“Mrs Moran here comes by of a morning,” Mrs McNamara went on in a louder voice. “Don’t you, Mamie? And we have a cup of tea and a chat so as we catch up on the news about town.”