He had felt like apologising just after he had hung up. Fergal Sheehy and his team were not responsible for the fact that there were no useful tips, leads or evidence from their door-to-door work. Minogue resolved to phone him in the morning, have a chat. An interview with a recent parolee was in progress in Crumlin station, Murtagh had told him, and it looked like the fella was spoken for. All the alibis completely sound, had been Minogue’s unbelieving query. Seriously, John? Seriously. What news on Jack Mullen then? Murtagh and two detectives from CDU had found and talked to some of Mullen’s fares. His alibi now covered virtually all the time that evening, with only scattered periods of five and ten minutes when he wasn’t either sitting in a taxi rank or with someone.
“Pardon? I’m sorry.”
“Away with the fairies,” said Iseult. “Again. Maybe it’s petit mal.”
“So you had it with the heat and the run around,” said Kathleen.
“Well,” he sighed. “In the heel of the reel, what we had seems to be slipping away. The suspects, I mean. And then, what we haven’t found… This girl kept things very much to herself.”
“Well, doesn’t that make you suspect she was involved in, you know, something, let’s say, illegal?” asked Kathleen. Minogue eyed Iseult.
“Easy for you to be so smart,” he said to Kathleen. “The word from on high as regards the organized crime stuff, well, that sort of tore the ar-it, er, sort of knocked the stuffing out of it for me. I can start fresh in the morning.”
“Please God,” said Kathleen. Minogue looked out into the garden. Please God? Did God, seeing everything, see what went on at the canal then? At night?
“Cooking for three is as easy as cooking for two,” said Kathleen.
“Not to speak of a fresh face at the table,” added Minogue. “And the chat.”
“I don’t want you to sell the house,” Iseult declared. Minogue kept a garlic belch to a muffled report by letting it linger around his larynx. Kathleen said nothing.
“I think those apartment things are bloody stupid, so I do,” Iseult went on. Minogue’s face twitched but Kathleen had spotted him. Iseult stood up.
“Leave the stuff, Ma. I’ll do it. I’m just going up the garden.”
Minogue watched his daughter’s progress up through the garden. She strolled with her arms crossed, by the shrubs and the trellis, one of his earlier follies now engulfed by creepers years before he had expected it.
“She’s making up for all the times we haven’t seen her since she moved out,” Kathleen said. “The bit of security now, I suppose. I don’t mind telling you, but I feel for Pat. I do. Now that he’s putting his foot down as regards the wedding. I never thought he would go for it myself. But God works in strange and mysterious ways.”
Put his foot down, thought Minogue. On a land-mine, if he only knew.
“What mysterious ways do you mean, exactly?”
“Stop that. You know what I mean. God looks out for people. We don’t always understand His ways. If we did, they wouldn’t be mysteries, would they?”
Minogue rubbed at his eyes. He had flunked Irish Catholic logic a long time ago. Mysteries indeed: what were the ones they had recited again at Lent? The Sorrowful Mysteries, The Joyful Mysteries? Which were which again? The Immaculate Conception, The Passion and Death of Our-
“Do you think she wants us to bring up the subject?” Kathleen repeated. “I have the feeling she wants to tell us something.”
“It’s only company she needs, love,” he said.
“Well, she knows what my opinions are. My beliefs, I should say. Not that I’d force them down her throat, now.”
Minogue opened his eyes again. She glanced at him.
“I sort of wish she’d move back,” she said. “But I could never say it to her.”
“You could, but you’d better put your fingers in your ears after you say it.”
“You tell her then.”
“I will not. But I’ll let her know it.”
“What are you saying? You’ll tell her, but you won’t tell her?”
“Something like that. How did you get on at work?”
Kathleen rested her chin on cupped hands. Minogue smiled.
“Huh. Those apartments in Donnybrook are selling like hot cakes. We were run off our feet.”
“Investors no doubt.”
“A lot of them, yes.”
“Spelled with an F, as the bold James Kilmartin might say.”
“They stimulate the economy, Matt.”
“My economy’s not for stimulating. It’s trying to get rid of stuff I am.”
He spotted Iseult’s head above the lilacs. She stooped. Had Iseult inherited, learned to mimic, his unease with the world? At least she had that flair for life, that appetite and gaiety which he now remembered had been native to his mother. It had come to him late enough. There was no knowing. It might well be one of those mysteries Kathleen fortified herself with. But Iseult, she had a lot of living to do to get to that stage. He suddenly feared for her, for the bills she’d be presented with daily for being different and averse, bills she could never pay. An innocent, for all her tough talk, and she hadn’t a clue about the price of things. Her words, the look on her face, had stayed in his thoughts: teach me how to be alone.
He launched himself up from the chair.
“Come down to Dun Laoghaire,” he said. “We’ll do the pier. I’ll buy you ice-cream.”
Kathleen stayed looking at the garden.
“Be still my heart. I’ll go and change, so I will.”
“Thanks now. Thanks a lot. Stonewalled at work, sarcasm at home.”
“What about Iseult?” Kathleen called out from the foot of the stairs.
“I’ll ask her.”
He trudged up the garden. Iseult was examining the underside of a leaf. She declined his invitation with a murmur. He didn’t ask a second time.
“Slugs,” he said. “There better not be. It’s too dry, sure.”
“Maybe there are under one of the leaves. I was looking for Pat.”
“Ah, give over. Are you going to get a voodoo doll next?”
She let go of the leaf and the stem swished back. There was a glint in her eye.
“He let me down, Da. I’d never tell him how much either.”
“Consider it a free installment in the marriage preparation classes.”
“Go to hell. You think it’s funny.” She jerked her head away. He felt ice in his veins. A swarm of midges moved in under the hedge. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s me that’s sorry,” he said.
“Well, I can take the details,” the cop said again. He had a culchie accent. Probably a big fat lug with the shirt hanging out of his trousers. He took another swig of the vodka. A belch came up from deep in his belly. Christ. Maybe he shouldn’t have started so early, but he’d started only to try to stay clear of going looking for a hit. And it wasn’t early anyway, it was after tea. He realized that he was swaying slightly. He leaned his shoulder against the side of the telephone box. The cop was still jabbering away.
“What,” he said. “What are you fucking rabbiting on about there?”
The cop’s voice stayed the same. It was like he hadn’t heard him.
“Leave me a number and I can have them get in touch with you very shortly.”
At least he hadn’t tried asking for the name again. As if he was stupid enough, or pissed enough. He focussed on the window where the phone was telling him he had two pence credit left. The telephone box stank. Someone had pissed in it. He watched the traffic turn up Hatch Street. His stomach gave another wormy twist. Christ, enough is enough! He’d been on the phone too long already.
“But why isn’t there someone there right now?”
The cop kept talking in that careful, polite voice.
“Well, it’s the kind of section where people are on the go at irregular times now. Calls are routed through that number you dialled if-”