A Carra King (14 page)

“You'll be okay. Just go easy on yourself. Don't react to stupid questions.”

“I don't mean appearing on TV here,” said Leyne. “Hell, that's nothing. What I mean is the father bit. The parent thing. You're the old school there, are you? No divorce or that, Mass on Sunday, all that . . .?”

“No.”

Leyne grabbed his arm again, squeezed.

“Listen,” Leyne said. “Do I look like a man who's interested in bullshit? In my condition? Let's talk man-to-man here. I never stopped being Irish. An Irishman, do you get it? The main thing here is, whatever you do, remember I'm behind you. All the way. You hear me?”

S
EVEN

L
eyne leaned in, pushed a nest of the microphones ba Minogue wondered what it was about Leyne's face that now reminded him of a fish. Another journalist placed a recorder on the table. Minogue stopped counting: there must be a dozen Guards around the room. Tynan sat in next to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “They want to start right away?”

“I suppose. What do I tell the parents that I don't give to a press conference?”

Tynan raised an eyebrow.

“Don't be dragging your feet,” he said.

Minogue eyed Gemma O'Loughlin chewing on a pen at the back of the room.

“I'm giving the bare minimum, John.”

Tynan put on his Easter Island face, looked out at the small crowd. Mrs. Shaughnessy was now sitting next to Leyne. He leaned toward her and said something. He put his hand on her arm. She seemed not to notice the hand.

King read the release. He didn't use the word
appeal
. That was left for him, Minogue realized. The lights dazzled him. He almost missed his cue but a television camera swivelled and settled on him. He heard himself begin, and he flinched at, but was grateful for, the clichés that flowed easily. Minogue looked over to Leyne and Mrs. Shaughnessy several times. The light had done something to her face. She sat upright, with that out-of-reach look Minogue hadn't learned to type conclusively over the years. Anger, sure, he supposed. Grief; tiredness; helplessness; disbelief. All of it. Leyne sat forward and studied some point in the far corner of the room. Minogue took in the dogged, strained face. The Pope was right, but something neanderthal about the jutting jaw, too.

Minogue's armpits began to prickle. He moved the sheaf of papers he'd used as a prop and glanced at King. King cued Mrs. Shaughnessy. She blinked and a tear slid down. She held up a finger to stop it. She sounded close to breathlessness. Leyne's hand went to her arm again. There was a sudden flurry of camera shutters. Minogue saw the journalists writing more.

It occurred to the Inspector that Mrs. Shaughnessy did not like asking for help. That she had practised what she was going to say. That she was not going to lose her poise. She called her son her only son. She said she had a deep affection for Ireland and his Irish roots. That his visits to Ireland had been high points in his life. She paused and bit her lip. Her son had even thought of moving to Ireland to live. Her voice wavered, she closed her eyes. Thirty something years in the States and her accent almost wholly Irish still, Minogue realized. Her mother and father, two brothers and two sisters still lived in County Cork. They were strong farmers; well up.

Justice, she said then. Her son would rest but his parents could not until — Tynan was sliding a note across. It had been folded once. “Release cause?” Minogue shook his head. Mrs. Shaughnessy finished. To Minogue's surprise, Leyne said nothing, but rose. He and Mrs. Shaughnessy were ushered away from the table. Minogue tried to count the flashes but gave up after ten. Two Guards in uniform blocked reporters from following the couple. Then King threw the conference open for questions.

The first one was from Seán Barrett, a hack who had thought himself an impregnable insider with the Guards until Tynan had come to the Commissioner's job. No more midnight jaunts on drug busts for Barrett, no more helicopter tours of uncovered arms dumps. Barrett, Kilmartin had heard, was more than pissed off at his fall from favour.

Minogue told Barrett he couldn't release cause of death until he was sure of it. Had the post-mortem been performed? It had. There was some doubt remaining? There were details that required careful examination. King picked out a face Minogue didn't recognize. An English accent, by God. He took in the leather jacket, the hair, the earring.

Was Mr. Shaughnessy the victim of organized criminal groups? Try disorganized, Minogue wanted to say, as criminals tended to be. No, he replied instead. There was nothing to suggest this yet. It was very early in the investigation. It would naturally fall under our consideration. Were there criminal gangs operating at the airport?

Minogue sidestepped it, threw in a decoy: unprecedented. The tabloid had to have its chance then. Minogue saw King almost grimace. The reporter hung on, poked the air with his pencil: Was the Dublin area now acknowledged to be suffering from an epidemic of violent crime? Was there not documented lack of security, an alarming lack of security, at the airport? Was Shaughnessy targeted as a tourist?

Tynan weighed in. Minogue watched Gemma O'Loughlin scribbling fast. Tynan's tone was almost kindly, the tone that Kilmartin most suspected: this wasn't the occasion to discuss trends and statistics or crimes. This was investigation, not extrapolation. There was no confirmation or even assertion that the murder had been committed at the airport — hence our appeal for info on Mr. Shaughnessy's whereabouts over the last several days and weeks.

A radio journalist next. Had Mr. Shaughnessy been reported as missing? Yes, for eight days. A search made? Fógra Tóradh issued to all stations Tuesday morning. Had there been any measures beyond the ordinary taken to locate Mr. Shaughnessy? Minogue had expected it earlier. He noticed that Tynan was sitting forward with his elbows on the table now. The Make My Day move, Kilmartin had called it, like I want the meeting over. Full resources of the Gardai brought to bear, came Tynan's reply. Particularly tragic when the crime victim was a visitor to our country.

King took Gemma O'Loughlin next. She glanced at Minogue several times as she spoke. Had Mr. Shaughnessy's family been the subject of any security concerns in the past? Prominent positions, well-known, et cetera . . .? King steered it to Tynan. Public figures, was Tynan's tack; the world we live in; extra measures. Minogue looked from face to face in the front row while Tynan did his slow rehash of the Garda appeal for sightings of Shaughnessy. He let his thoughts go to the maps in the squad room. Donegal, with roads over the bogs like the twists and leavings of thread or wool on the floor after Iseult had been doing a tapestry.

A handful of reporters remained seated. The camera crew had nearly finished disassembling. Tony O'Leary sat on the edge of the deserted table. Minogue watched hotel staff carrying away chairs.

“All right,” said Tynan. “You're headed back out to the airport?”

“Probably.”

The day was running away on him. He'd need to be back into town again by half-six to get his head straight for the briefing. Traffic . . .?

“But after I check with Éilis.”

“Tony'll take you out so,” said Tynan.

O'Leary had parked the Commissioner's Opel at the taxi rank by the top of Dawson Street. Minogue rolled down the window. He was glad of the noise along the green.

“I'll set up a meeting,” said Tynan. “Tomorrow early, say. Give them a bit of time to get themselves together. They have nothing recent on him, on the son, you know that? But Mrs. knows you want to talk to her.”

Minogue took out his phone.

“Did Leyne tell you anything on the way in?” Tynan asked.

Minogue switched the phone back to standby.

“He told me he was still an Irishman.”

“Did he run us all down as backward iijits, Guards included?”

“More or less.”

Tynan nodded.

“But I fell to thinking,” Minogue resumed, “well, that Leyne has the look of a man not in the whole of his health.”

Tynan stared at Minogue's forehead for a moment.

“You wouldn't be the first to notice,” he said. “There's keen interest in that very subject. He's sitting on about two hundred million dollars.”

“He didn't mention that to me on the trip in from the airport.”

Tynan didn't register receipt of the dig.

“Well, did he tell you anything?”

“He did but I don't know what it means. ‘It'll all come out eventually' he said.”

“What ‘all'?”

“Family, I think,” Minogue said. “The son was a bit wild.”

Tynan stared at the open door of the Opel, and then across the roof at O'Leary.

“I'll walk it, Tony,” he said. “Meet me up at the office.”

O'Leary glanced at Minogue.

“No he wouldn't be loaded, Tony. We'll be okay.”

Minogue followed Tynan across to the broad footpath that surrounded Stephen's Green. The Commissioner was a brisk walker.

“All the free advice I get,” Tynan said. “Now Tony is supposed to carry a gun and take bodyguard training.”

“Have you . . .?”

“Threats? Course I have. Tell me, what'd you make of Mrs.?”

“I don't know. Genteel, if the word means anything anymore. Are she and Leyne, what's the word — ”

“Amicable? They are now. The marriage lasted only a few years. He didn't fight the settlement.”

“Well heeled, is she?”

Tynan slowed his pace for a moment.

“Get the notion of preferential treatment out of your head. Face the facts: Leyne's high profile, and we'll be in the spotlight along with him. There's a lot of other baggage as well: the Leyne Foundation, the half-dozen companies he has a stake in. Biotech, food processing, mining.”

“I know a little bit more, too. He was a lousy parent. A lousy husband.”

Minogue thought of Leyne's grip on his arm as they stepped out of the limo for the press conference.

“A philanderer I was told,” Tynan went on. “Not a boozer, but.”

Tynan turned sharply in through the gate into the green.

“So how'd he strike you?”

Minogue watched two kids feeding lumps of bread the size of tennis balls to the ducks. The pond was grey today. Downy feathers lay on the scum by the walk.

“He wants what he wants,” he said. “Whatever that is. Guilt too, maybe, about the son. And he said he'd, er, back me up.”

“Well, that's nice to hear,” said Tynan. Minogue eyed him.

“Back me up against a wall maybe, John. If I don't come through the way he wants.”

They turned by the fountain for the German airmen and headed down the walk toward the Harcourt Street gate. Minogue tried to hold on to the sound of the flowing water as long as he could.

Éilis answered. Murtagh was on the phone but he'd said he wanted to talk to him. Minogue waited. Sitting in the passenger seat of the Commissioner's car being sort of chauffeured around didn't feel glam so much as stupid. O'Leary adjusted the volume on the radio. Dispatch was trying to reroute a payroll van and its escort around an accident scene on the North Circular Road.

“Okay,” said Murtagh then. “Good. Are you in town, boss?”

“I am. I hardly got a look in at the airport before this jaunt back.”

“There's stuff coming in, pictures. Pictures of Shaughnessy at some dos. The races, some get together with the music crowd. He was socializing hot and heavy before he went west.”

Minogue wondered if Murtagh had intended the wit.

“There's a photographer at the
Evening Press
doing some legwork for us. He's been phoning around fellas he knows in all the papers. So far we have Shaughnessy at four different dos. Four, no less. Quite the lad.”

“Who's with him, or near him, even?”

“Yes. I'm looking at one just in over the fax. It's spotty and all, but he's got a girl under his oxter in one.”