Buzz-cut flexed his fingers. He kept his eyes on Buzz-cut’s as he stepped out the door.
“What’s so strange about asking a question about a friend of mine? All you have to say is, well-Jesus! People these days! Must be the bleeding music turns you into head-cases here.”
He was out on the footpath before Buzz-cut began to move. Why the hell hadn’t Mary told him? Had it been that long since he’d seen her? He looked at his watch. Was there a phone box around here?
FOUR
Don’t have much of an appetite meself either,” said Malone. Bun under his belt, Minogue stirred his coffee and watched his colleague wolf down another sausage roll. The Inspector had picked a table near the door of Bewleys’ restaurant. The late-morning crowd continued to move through the ground-floor section. Many patrons sat slouched, their faces flushed and even slick with the heat. Eyes shone in the clammy gloom. Two men in ponytails and brightly patterned shirts were lining up for coffee. He knew from Peter Flood in the Drug Squad that the taller one was a convicted drug dealer. Both men were elegantly groomed and outfitted. They were enjoying a good laugh. One of them spotted Minogue and his laugh turned to a smile. Minogue saw him elbow his crony and murmur something. The crony began to concentrate on the food he was picking. Some town, thought the Inspector. Bananas we should be growing.
A waitress began cleaning up the adjoining table. He watched her blow breath up from under her bottom lip at a stray strand of hair over her forehead. Blonde, he saw, and out of a bottle at that. The roots looked black, same as Mary Mullen’s. He sipped more coffee. The image kept soaking in behind his eyes: the killer astride her, slamming her head on the pavement. Minogue stretched and rubbed hard at his eyes. The image was still with him.
“Quite the bullock,” Minogue murmured. Malone looked up from his tea.
“Patricia Fahy’s father, I meant.”
Minogue stared at the question marks he had scribbled in his notebook. He shifted in his seat and snapped his notebook shut.
“Well, Fahy won’t get his spake in the next time, Tommy.”
“Will we try her later on again this afternoon?”
“Maybe tomorrow instead. People lose it when they get a shock, but still I think that the same Patricia Fahy was being a bit economical with the truth. Not knowing much about where Mary was working or socializing? Doesn’t fit.”
Malone nodded and squinted at the Inspector.
“And didn’t know if Mary had a boyfriend? Her own flatmate?”
“Pull the other one, like,” said Minogue. “It’s got bells on it.”
“She’s scared, isn’t she?”
Minogue nodded. Malone finished his tea and looked at his watch.
“Stop me if I’m being pushy now,” he said. “But aren’t we supposed to be in a rush?”
Minogue eyed him and sipped at the leftover froth in his coffee.
“Before the trail goes cold and all that?”
“I suppose,” said the Inspector. “But we’re moving along well enough. Forensic takes time. We’re getting her father; we’re connecting her to criminal associates. We’ve interviewed the mother. Done a lot of site work, started the secondary search. We’re not working alone, man. The teams are out there already.”
“Huh,” said Malone. “There must have been someone by that part of the canal the other night.”
“I hope you’re right. I found a rake of spots along the canal where you’re out of sight of the street. I was able to walk right under the bridge even. The light’s bad.”
Malone tapped his fingers on the table, bit his lip and nodded several times.
“Mightn’t even be the site, Tommy. Could’ve brought her there, slipped her out of a car. Even if we find damn-all from the canal, we don’t want to get locked onto assumptions here.”
Malone rubbed at his nose and glanced at the Inspector. The gesture reminded Minogue of a boxer getting the last word from the trainer as the bell sounded to start the round.
“What do you reckon yourself? So far, like.”
Malone began plucking the hairs by his watch-strap.
“Well, I reckon I don’t want to make an iijit out of myself with guessing, do I.”
“I’m not trying to get a rise out of you,” said Minogue. “So I’ll tell you what’s been going through my mind. With that bruise in the face, he was probably facing her. I’m going on the assumption for now that he’s not a citeog.”
“A what?”
“Left-handed. If he did that, he’s a certain type of person. Strong, of course. More than just a short fuse. I mean, very, very aggressive type of a fella. You go over a distinct barrier as regards behaviour when you hit someone in the face. Especially a woman.”
Malone rested his cheeks on his fists. “Okay,” he said.
“You’d be inclined to expect a pattern. A record, if you follow me.”
Malone’s fists had pushed his cheeks up to his eyelashes. Minogue finished his coffee. He looked into the narrow slits which Malone’s eyes had become.
“How’d you get into the boxing anyway?”
“The, er, the brother got me started.” Malone leaned in over the table and frowned up under his eyebrows at Minogue.
“Listen, on that same matter. Do we have a minute?”
“Fire away.”
“Well, there’s something I wanted to tell you. I didn’t know how to sort of bring it up. What she said back in the flat. Patricia Fahy. Thinking she was being set up?”
Minogue smiled.
“About your brother? That was a hoot entirely.”
“Yeah, well. Funny to you, maybe. This has to do with the brother, all right. And the Egans. The brother was mixed up with them.”
Malone looked down at the fork as though wondering how it had gotten there.
“They got Terry where he is now,” he muttered. “In the ’Joy, like. He used to do stuff for them.”
He glanced over at Minogue.
“Is it going to, you know…?”
Minogue pushed his cup and saucer toward the middle of the table-top.
“Why should it?” he said. “You’re here due your own record, not your brother’s.”
“Another thing. I can take the slagging about being a Dub. The Molly Malone thing and all. Really.”
Minogue nodded.
“But I got to tell you I can’t take much stick about the brother.”
“I’ll, er, pass that on to the appropriate authorities, Tommy.”
Malone looked down at the cup and saucer which Minogue had marooned on the marble table-top.
“Terry’s not a bad person. But I’m sick and tired of looking out for him, wondering what he’ll get up to next. He’s just finished eighteen months of a two-year for Break and Enter. He’ll be out any day soon. Terry’s not even much good at it. He did it to get money for drugs. He tells me that’s all over now. Last time I visited, he looks me in the eye: ‘I’m clean.’ Yeah, right, Terry, I say: prove it, man. I can’t afford to believe him. If they find the gene for being a gobshite it’ll have Terry’s name on it.”
Minogue thought about more coffee.
“I gave up getting embarrassed about Terry years ago. All I do nowadays is try to stop him dragging anyone down with him. Me younger brother. The Ma.”
“How do you mean?”
“The Ma? Oh, scrounging money. ‘Just a loan, Ma!’ The Da’s dead three years now. The Da used to give him the bum’s rush. Nearly knocked the head off of him with a piece of pipe one night.”
Malone picked up a napkin and wiped the corners of his mouth.
“Didn’t help the Da much, did it? Died of a heart attack on the kitchen floor. I’ve sisters married. They’re doing all right. Then there’s Tony. He’s nineteen. The baby. He’s training for supermarket management. Terry tries, you know, he really does. Then he sees the crowd he used to hang around with…”
Malone crushed the paper napkin into a ball and rolled it onto the table.
“Sure what can you tell them and they seeing the likes of the Egans making fortunes out of rackets and drugs and everything? ‘Do the right thing’? ‘Bite the fucking bullet’?”