The noise of an accelerating motorbike startled him. He walked fast by the gates to the Park. Soon the city’s buildings began falling into place alongside him. He realized that he had been almost running. He knew what he would do. No way was anyone going to corner him or try to put one over on him. He was going to stay free, like an outlaw.
THIRTEEN
Minogue put down the phone, drummed hard with his biro and then pitched it in the air. Kilmartin looked over. “What’s the matter with-Hello? Hello? Yes. I’m trying to get in contact with someone who’d know about modelling agencies. Yes. Well, that’s the problem now, this one is gone out of business.”
Kilmartin’s unseeing gaze roamed about the squadroom while he listened.
“Exactly,” the Chief Inspector went on in a pleasing tone. “I’m out of Dublin a while and I wanted to look up a person I used to know. Yes.”
He winked at Minogue.
“Oh, yes. A very nice girl she was. That’s right-What?”
Kilmartin’s face darkened and he slid off the edge of the desk.
“What did you just say to me?”
Minogue heard the line go dead. Kilmartin dropped the receiver and stared at it.
“Gave me the P.O. Did you ever hear the like? The nerve of him!”
“Maybe it was the genuine article, James. A real modelling agency.”
Kilmartin picked the receiver up and laid it gently on the phone.
“Huh. Any luck, you?”
Minogue shook his head. Kilmartin pulled a face.
“Sure, there’s no jobs in the country,” he said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if a girl’d turn to you-know-what. The trade.”
The Chief Inspector’s eyes closed. The fart, a prolonged one, reminded Minogue of a rusty door-hinge. Kilmartin opened his eyes again.
“At least inflation’s holding steady,” he whispered.
Minogue made for the room-divider toward Malone.
“Are you there, Tommy? Let’s try that place.”
“Which one?” Kilmartin called out. “That ‘Just You’ one?”
“That’s the one, Jim. On George’s Street. It’s the only place so far with an address. The rest are just phone numbers: ‘We’ll meet you at so and so’s.’”
Kilmartin lumbered up behind Minogue.
“Telephone girls, hah?” He yawned. “They’re getting to be like the banks. Pick up the phone, by God, and they make money. Not a stroke of work, real work as you and I would understand about.”
“Stroking’s hard enough work,” said Malone as he wrote. “If it’s done right.”
“Ha, ha, ha. Let me tell you, I know fellas do their day’s work on the phone. And they’re well paid too. Sure, that’s not the real world, I tell them. Know what they tell me when I ask them what the hell goes on in the line of real work in those bloody glasshouse-looking places? Like those efforts made of glass you can’t even use to look through? Christ, they’d blind you, and you trying to see where you’re going.”
“You can see out but you can’t see in, Jimmy.”
“Oh, a genius amongst the common rabblement here. Thanks. Well, anyway. Do you know what they say, cocked up in the chairs in the lounge with the Jag parked outside and the boxes of wine and the daughter married to the doctor, etcetera, etcetera?”
Minogue was wary of another fart. He beckoned to Malone.
“The suspense is killing me, Jim,” he muttered.
“‘This is the Information Age, Jim,’ they say. La-di-da. Like I’m a gom just in from the bog, you know? ‘The borders are coming down, Jim.’ ‘Jim, you only have to be in the right place at the right time.’ ‘Timing is everything, Jim.’ ‘Jim, the basic ingredient for making money is time.’ All paper money, says I. Tricks. Magic money with nothing behind it. The eighties gone mad: all money, no value.”
“Well, Christ,” he added as Minogue and Malone made for the door, “says I to one of them, a fella I know well and would ordinarily take halfway seriously, they were wrong about the oldest profession in the world. Do you get it?”
Malone let back the seat and leaned his arm out the window. Minogue drew a squeal out of the tires as he accelerated through the amber light onto the quays.
“Wouldn’t mind spending the rest of the day up in the Park,” said Malone.
Minogue looked at the greenery of Phoenix Park as it receded in his rear-view mirror. The Citroen picked up speed. He opened the sunroof completely. The breeze which blew his hair asunder barely stirred Malone’s crew-cut.
“Were you in the Park for the Pope’s mass there, back whenever?” asked Malone.
“Kathleen went all right,” murmured the Inspector. “I sort of prefer watching the deer myself.”
He took in Malone’s turn of the head, the second’s scrutiny.
“Okay,” he went on. “Tell me how you’d like to work this call now.”
The car was an oven. He thought about parking it in the shade somewhere, but Malone might not spot it. He looked at his watch. He’d give him ten more minutes. He couldn’t shake scraps of the conversation he’d had yesterday with Iseult out of his head. He checked the stand-by and the charge light again and shoved the phone into the door pocket of the Citroen. The sun was hot on his head, too hot. He turned the ignition and pushed the button to close the sunroof.
Malone opened the door, climbed in and slammed the door in one fluid movement.
“Thanks,” he said. “Got something anyway.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah. I let her know right off the bat that I could come in heavy if she wasn’t on the ball here. Swore on a stack of Bibles she had nothing to do with brassers or that.”
“So why did she give you the come-on over the phone?”
“She thought I just wanted pictures.”
“That’s what she has?”
“Yeah. ‘What sort of a project do you have in mind?’ says she. ‘Project.’ That’s when I flashed the card. Big change. Anyway. So far as I can read between the lines, she’s an agency for models. No actresses or that, just fashion and advertising. It’s a room with fancy chairs and stacks of fake flowers and all. There’s folders like you get when you’re going to get married, photographs and all, with her clients. Models. Nothing wild now. Bikinis is as far as they go. She didn’t know anything about Mary Mullen. I tried the names of the other places we’ve dug up so far. ‘1001 Nights’ got her going. Turned up the nose, admitted she’d heard of it. ‘One of those places that gives the business a bad name.’ ”
“What do you think then?”
Malone scratched at his bristly crown.
“Hard to say. Says she, ‘You have to be very careful these days.’ She’d heard that ‘organized crime’ had moved in and was dragging the profession into the dirt.“
“‘Profession,” said Minogue.
“She said she’d thought of getting out of the ‘profession’ but couldn’t do it to her clients.”
“Is she scared?”
“Hard to say. She’s happy enough to pass a fella on to someone who does a different kind of photography though.”
“What’s in it for her?”
“I reckon she’s in on it somewhere. Far enough out to be able to hold her nose and walk away from any poking we can do. But I bet she gets a backhander for passing someone on to the other end of the business.”
“Just a front?”
“No. I saw ads and clippings in the model’s port…what you call it. I suppose she’s legit.”
“Portfolios.”
“Well, I got a phone number that we didn’t have before.”
Minogue started the engine and the Citroen rose up smartly on its suspension.
“Lift-off,” said Malone. The Inspector worked the car down off the curb.
“What are we looking at, Tommy?”
“Pictures. ‘Models.’ Mary Mullen. Prostitution. I don’t know.”
“Who tossed her place?” asked the Inspector. “What did they want?”
Malone tapped the door panel.
“And was she already in the canal when the place was done?”
Minogue took the phone out of the glove box. Murtagh was back.
“Thanks, Eilis,” he said. He studied the crowds on South Great George’s Street.
“Johnner? Me and Tommy are out here baking away in the car. How’d it go with Lollipop?”