A Carra King (12 page)

Malone had found out that both of Shaughnessy's parents would be coming over. Geraldine Shaughnessy, the mother and Leyne's ex, hadn't remarried. Leyne himself was already on the plane, someone said. It was O'Riordan, Leyne's old pal in Ireland, who had identified the body at four in the morning. It had been at the joint request of the mother and father. A representative of Leyne had faxed through the confirmation to Tynan's office this morning.

“The blood alcohol will be done by three or so, I imagine,” said Donavan. “If you have the queue jumped. As per your routine fashion.”

“Thanks, Pierce,” said Minogue. He looked down at his notes again.

“Do you be over Glencree much still?”

“Most Sundays,” said Minogue. “More, now the autumn is here.”

“Do you suffer company?”

Minogue managed a smile.

“Stop off at the house, can't you. We'll take the one car up.”

“Do you hear me arguing? Remember me to Kathleen.”

S
IX

M
alone jammed second gear as he sped away from lights. He accelerated hard on the motorway.

“You know what gets to me?” he said to Minogue. “Like,
really
gets to me?”

“Tell me, why don't you.”

“It's when they're finished. I swear to God, man. I can take the face being pulled back down: I can. The
brain
flopping around on the table even.”

Malone glanced over at the Inspector.

“It's when they tie up the bag.”

“The bag,” Minogue said.

“With the stuff inside it. The organs, like? They shove things back in, inside the rib cage. Now that's what
really
gets me. Know what I'm saying?”

Nowharamsane. Minogue yawned. He'd been counting: seventeen APF officers on the roster. A couple of hundred staff. Cleaners, baggage handlers, drivers. Maintenance, delivery people, bottle-washers. Shop assistants, pilots, stewardesses. Passengers, passengers' families saying goodbye to passengers. Passengers' families saying hello to passengers. Sheehy'd need twenty officers to make a dent in this.

“Reminds me of well, you know. The Christmas? A turkey or something. Sick, isn't it?”

Minogue followed a plane's approach out over the sea. The plane seemed to hover there over Howth. A holding pattern.

“But you have to hand it to him,” said Malone. “An art. That's what it is.”

The flaps down, Minogue thought, and the wheels were claws searching for a place to perch. Fifty, sixty tons, were they? Jesus. All in the space of a lifetime, this stuff too. Neither his father nor his mother had been inside a plane.

“And the size of the needle, but,” Malone said and began pulling at an eyebrow.

Minogue shifted to get his notebook out. He had the phone open when it rang. It was Tony O'Leary. The family was flying in from the States very shortly.

“It's Leyne's jet they're coming in on,” said O'Leary. “Boss wants to know how you stand on it.”

Minogue looked out at the broken lines of the motorway rushing by them. As if O'Leary didn't know.

“Strangely enough, Tony, we were on the way to the airport.”

“He's tied up until after four. He wants you to represent him.”

“Haven't you phoned Lawlor? He could do that handy enough.”

“Says will you phone him if you can't.”

Minogue let a few moments go by.

“The mother and Leyne, is it?”

“That's it. Probably a few people with them. Justice is sending Declan King.”

Assistant Minister of Justice King was an ex-Guard turned barrister. King had been dubbed King Declan by Kilmartin in disdainful, edgy regard for King's talents as the Minister's principal arm-twister for Gardai. An intense pain in the face, Kilmartin avowed.

“And wants you to brief Leyne,” O'Leary added. “Within reason.”

The Nissan leaned in hard on the bend. Minogue realized that he was squeezing the phone hard against his ear.

“Give me a minute there, Tony,” he managed.

He turned to Malone.

“Take it handy for the love of God, man. And pull in after the roundabout. We might be changing the menu here.”

He took his hand off the phone.

“Let me see if I have this right, Tony. The Commissioner of the Gardai wants me to brief Leyne on a murder investigation that's hardly gotten started?”

“That's what he wanted.”

O'Leary must have been holding his breath too.

“Leyne is an American, zillionaire frozen food tycoon and I am a Garda Inspector.”

“He says he'll let you in on the thing soon's he can.”

“Where do we take him? In town I mean.”

“There's a press conference set for the Shelbourne Hotel.”

A press conference, Minogue thought. I can't be running around like an iijit, chaperoning some fella. I have to break this case right away. It's speed now, at this stage. He knows that.

“I can't be running around the city like an iijit. Tell him that, will you.”

O'Leary said nothing. Minogue stared at a flattened Coke can in the grass.

“All right, Tony. Where's himself at the moment anyway?”

“He's caught up with a task force on criminal assets.”

Minogue rather liked the indignation warming his throat and chest.

“But he'll definitely be out for the press conference though,” O'Leary said. “It can double for your public appeal, if you're having one.”

“I'll see him there then. And I have a shopping list.”

“Say the word.”

“Fergal Sheehy's going to need a dozen officers to get started in earnest. He has five there with him now. Forensic's still working the site so the van's staying put. I'll call you in about fifteen minutes and give you a list.”

“Absolutely.”

Minogue thumbed the End button twice. Absolutely? He watched the airport buildings rise slowly above the hedges as Malone braked for the roundabout.

“Go on in, Tommy. I need to look around. The security office first.”

Malone waited until they had stepped out of the car to ask him.

“What's O'Leary want?”

“Céad míle fáilte
for our American friends, Tommy. Lucky I have the spare tin whistle in the boot.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am. Can you sing ‘Danny Boy'?”

“Bollocks! I get Sergeant out of this. Just for agreeing to be here.”

Minogue stepped in front of his colleague. He gave him a hard look.

“All right so. No more playing to the gallery, Tommy. I'm a lot more annoyed than you are. You'll be staying with Fergal at the airport. I'll go back into town with the VIPs and head a press conference afterwards.”

Malone's grimace was almost too much for Minogue.

“Just drive. And don't be making faces at me.”

Fergal Sheehy was perched on the edge of a table littered with printouts and maps of the airport. He nodded at Minogue, returned to squinting at the map. Minogue took off his jacket. The coffee stain was still there. That bucket-arsed shopper with the five hundred shopping bags after the Christmas sales had ambushed him in Bewleys.

“I've been looking,” Sheehy said. “There's holes all over the place.”

“The schedules?”

“The whole thing. Sure, they have video at the terminals but — here, have you been into the monitoring room yet?”

“No.”

“There's three areas basically: indoors, approaches to the terminal — that's the one they pay the most attention to for drive-ups and vehicle bombs. Then there's a camera over the main entry for traffic flow. That's it. There's plans and all the rest of it to get full coverage by the end of next year.”

Sheehy pushed himself up off the table. He nodded down at the maps.

“That car park's blind. So there.”

Minogue slipped his jacket back on.

“Fergal. I have to sit in on some class of a briefing with the mother and father when they land. Then I'm off to town again. Press conference and appeal.”

“Well that's very nice for you. Who have I got here?”

“Tommy. I'll put in the call for staff in a minute.”

“When do you want the pow-wow?”

“Aim for seven.”

Minogue headed down the hallway that led to the public areas of the terminal. There were five security officers waiting in chairs in the hallway. He took the stairs down to a door that opened onto the Arrivals. He looked up at the screens but then remembered Leyne had his own plane. He counted: seven hours flying, more maybe. Plus five, for the time change. Leyne and the ex-wife had left Boston four in the morning their time.

He spotted Declan King talking to a ruddy-faced man in a navy suit. King made his way over.

“Matt?”

“Good day to you now, Declan.”

“Kieran Hayes. He works out of CDU.”

Minogue didn't fight back much against the clamp Hayes issued as a handshake. He took in the ruddy complexion, the well-tended hair, the heavy jaw. “Works out of” meant nothing: Hayes was a cowboy. Minogue wondered if members of the new mob had been given protective duties too.

The latest incarnation of Emergency Response was called the Cobra Squad. Minogue had heard “take down” and “Cobra” in the same sentence at a session in Ryan's pub a few months back. At first he'd thought they were talking about a film. Someone had told him that this Cobra Squad was to be the latest hammer for paramilitary gangs in the South.

Hayes raised his eyebrows, excused himself. Minogue watched him thread his way through the line-ups. He began to pick out the other detectives stationed around the building.

King kept looking around the Arrivals hall.

“You're up and running on this?”

Minogue looked at him.

“I'm only asking because you can expect Leyne to,” King said. “Do you know him, or of him?”

“He's some class of a tycoon. That much I know.”

“Very direct. Down to earth. He'll — oh, here we go now.”

Hayes was pointing to a door marked No Entry. Minogue followed King. At the end of a short corridor the Inspector found himself in a carpeted room a little smaller than the squad room. In lieu of real windows were two stained glass panels full of detailed Celtic ornaments. An exit sign hung over the door to the left. An olive carpet, puffy-looking leather sofas, indirect lighting and low tables.

One of the detectives, a skinny, greying fella with the look of a fox about his profile gave Minogue the nod. Minogue couldn't remember the name, but he was almost certain that it was the same one who had been front and centre in an infamous
Irish Times
photo of a demonstrator being given a hiding at a Euro summit in Dublin several years ago. Minogue eyed the stained glass and the panelling.

A door opened behind him. The man who came through was a lift from a movie or a magazine, an American magazine. The eyes flicked around the room, he turned, said hi to King and left again. Minogue perched on the back of a sofa. King tugged at his jacket, checked his watch.

“He has a tendency to take over,” King said with what might have been a smile. “He may get in your face.”

The door opened again and drew in the stink of cooking and engine oil and rubber. Customs Officer, looking very pleased with himself. Minogue couldn't remember seeing one spruced up to such splendour before. There followed a short, broad-shouldered man, plodding more than walking into the VIP reception area. It's the Pope, was Minogue's first thought. He almost said as much. Startled, he stared at the lined forehead, the stoop, the jutting jaw. The remains of curly white hair fell halfway down over his ears. Even from across the room Minogue could see the membrane of dried spittle in the corners of Leyne's mouth.

Behind Leyne, and nearly a head taller, came a woman with rust-coloured hair, a pale complexion and red-rimmed, blue eyes. The cut of the maroon trouser suit Minogue had glimpsed in fashion magazines, but the face was from a winter's day walk on a country road in the west of Ireland. Forty-eight, he remembered from the paper, and she didn't take the sunglasses route, it seemed.

A bulky, well-groomed man in his forties followed. He hesitated, his briefcase held tight by his leg, and then stood to Leyne's right. Principal handler/flunky, Minogue decided. He wondered how many more Leyne had brought with him.

He looked over again. The multimillionaire hadn't grown an inch since he'd last looked. The head like a boulder or the like, so out of proportion to the frame. Now she wasn't much short of six feet, he decided. These were Patrick Leyne Shaughnessy's parents, he thought as he stepped forward, and half-wondered where his annoyance had disappeared to: Mrs. Geraldine Shaughnessy and her former husband, Mr. John Leyne. The long and the short of it.