A Carra King (15 page)

One night stand, Minogue wondered.

“Find her, can we?”

“The snapshots are being couriered over.”

“Nothing new on placing him after he left Dublin?”

“No. But I was just talking to Serious Crimes about the airport. Kevin Cronin's got names from stuff late last year. Cars robbed. There was a mugging in one of the car parks. Never nailed down, but Cronin says he could point us to a few gougers who should be in the know. Here's the catch: one's in the Joy. The other one's out of the picture in England somewhere.”

Minogue yawned. He might as well go out to the airport and shoulder his share of the interviews.

“Listen, I forgot,” he said to Murtagh. “Get Éilis to update the appeal in the press release as soon as she can, will you? Along with anyone who used that car park at the airport — I forgot to put in about any snapshots or videos people might have taken there. Coming and going, like.”

“Okay. Remember the call in from some fella in the Museum? Shaughnessy was talking to someone in there . . .?”

“Go ahead, yes.”

“When he signed himself in as Leyne? I have a name on the woman he talked with there: Aoife Hartnett.”

“Is she handy?”

“No,” said Murtagh. “She's on her holidays, wouldn't you know it. Away off in Portugal is the best I can give you right now.”

“Since?”

“Em. A week back.”

Minogue looked down at the book that had slid out from under the seat when O'Leary had braked hard at the lights in Whitehall. Where was Asmara again? He thought back to the name of the woman who'd called in from the B & B in Donegal.

“John,” he said. “The call-in that said something about Shaughnessy may be travelling with a woman. That was Donegal, wasn't it?”

Minogue grimaced and searched around the room for something to get rid of the taste.

“I don't know what that is,” he sighed. “But coffee, it ain't.”

Malone and Sheehy seemed to be surviving the tea. Malone tapped on the list again.

“This fella's on the level. Coughlan. The APF. He's going to drop Fogarty in the shite.”

That wasn't the plan, Minogue wanted to say.

Minogue watched a feeble, fussy granny enter the airport restaurant on the arm of a hungover-looking man in an ill-fitting suit. Not the emigrant Paddys of old, he thought, with the string around the suitcase at the dock for the night sailing.

“Want to bet Coughlan or other fellas have a chip on the shoulder,” Malone said. “And they want to drop their boss for something?”

Minogue shrugged.

“There are no direct pointers yet,” said Sheehy. “The patrols all log in the checkpoints, but sure they might as well be sleepwalking, some of 'em.”

“How are we for response from people who parked there over the week?” Minogue asked. He looked down at his scribbles. “Five people so far, is it?”

Sheehy nodded. Malone looked at his watch.

“Half-four,” he said. “There's only six or seven security staff left to do.”

Minogue looked down at the personnel lists and the companies under contract.

“Is this it, Fergal? The whole shebang?”

“There's a few missing,” Sheehy said. “But they'll come through.”

“All right. What's the story on the vicinity search?”

Malone said that the dumpsters were still being checked. They'd located the tip where the terminal rubbish was disposed of.

Minogue thought of a rubbish tip, flocks of seagulls circling and squabbling. He'd better go down to the site, close it up. The technicians had come up dry. They'd worked it all morning. He checked his watch.

“Let's head down to the security office,” he said. “We'll deal out what we have.”

He turned to Sheehy.

“We'll aim for half-seven. At the squad, if you please, Fergal. Run up summaries, like a good man, and smarten us up on where we're headed with leads from here anyway.”

Eoin Gormley, one of the newest forensic technicians, and Paddy Tuttle, probably the longest serving, were in the site van.

“Well, men,” Minogue said. “We'll give it the once-over again.”

Tuttle talked to Gormley about cigarette butts on their way across the access road to the car park. Minogue's bad shoulder ached worse. He thought about his brother's gnarled hands, how he could hardly walk down the lane on the farm now.

The tarmac in the car park looked soft. There were clumps of moss like sponge by the cement bollards. The Guard on shift was leaning against an unmarked car. Minogue studied the space within the tape, the holes where the tarmac had been taken up.

“A right lot of rain we've had,” said the Guard. Soil samples, the contents of the boot, Minogue was thinking: that comb under the seat. The odometer said Shaughnessy had gone nearly 1400 kilometres. He stared at the stripped section of tar by the back of the Escort.

“Anything definite to tell us he was attacked here?”

Tuttle tugged at his ear.

“Do you want the considered version or the man-in-a-hurry version?”

“Whichever you like, now Paddy. No miracles expected.”

“That's where the back bumper was, see? The ‘B'?”

Minogue looked along the chalk line.

“We 'scoped and scrubbed for blood all up and down there before we took that patch up. The rain would've carried it off fair enough, but there are plenty of crevices in the tar that'd hold it. Minute though, very minute. It'd be degraded there fast too. Acidy. The compounds in there, well . . .”

“Tires, shoes?”

“There's residue all over the place,” said Tuttle. “But you'll never distinguish them. That's going nowhere. We measured under where the wheels were. There's a difference all right but that's good for nothing, time-wise.”

“Cars parked there before, you're going to tell me,” Minogue murmured. “And will do so again?”

“I measured just a half an hour ago after to compare,” Tuttle went on. “Sure the damn stuff comes back up again. Spongy. The time of day. A bit of sun . . .”

“Paddy. The site: I know you're not a betting man now.”

Tuttle looked away toward the terminal. The sky had brown tints.

“Sorry, Matt. I couldn't really.”

“‘Forensic Science wouldn't support it'?”

Tuttle nodded.

“Eoin?”

“Ditto. You'd be reading tea leaves.”

“It's in the car you'll get anything here,” said Tuttle.

Minogue tugged at the tape. Emerald Rent-A-Car had an option to leave their car at the airport but Shaughnessy hadn't taken it. Had he changed his mind, or had whoever driven the car thought they could lose it for a while? Some bloody scut, he thought again, a hitchhiker, travelling on Shaughnessy's credit cards. Match the entry to the exit from the Aer Lingus passenger lists: point of entry passport controls from the ferries. But if they'd come through the North he'd have the U.K. control data to reckon with.

Tuttle asked him again.

“Sorry, Paddy. Yes. Thanks. The car, yes, we have that, to be sure.”

The Guard helped them take down the tape and fold the uprights.

Inspector Minogue was getting to know the Swords Road a bit too well. He thought of the trips back from the airport each time they'd brought his son and de facto daughter-in-law out for their flight back. Kathleen silent, her crying done. Daithi pale, himself bewildered. The trips were getting spread out now. There had been three trips in four years — a trend — and Daithi wasn't sure about this Christmas either. Wasn't sure, quote unquote. The job was intense. It was the price you paid for the fast track. If he's not coming home at least once a year, well . . . Kathleen had started the sentence often but had never finished it.

A low-slung sports car with a laughing driver and a woman pushing back her long hair rocketed by only to brake sharply as a taxi passed a van at a leisurely fifty miles an hour. Malone kept trying to see the driver.

“Jases,” said Malone. “That's what's his name. Isn't it?”

Minogue looked over. A Porsche, by God, and a turbo at that.

“It looks like him all right.”

“Yeah, I knew it was. The film fella.
A Rebel Hand.
What's his name?”

Malone gave the Inspector a sly look.

“Fannon. Gary Fannon.”

“Will I flash the badge? Have a go at him for the driving?”

Minogue studied the gestures of Ireland's
enfant terrible
director while he waited for the taxi to move out of the fast lane. Who was the girl?

“He was doing ninety,” Malone said. “Seen him bombing along in the mirror. Eighty anyhow.”

“Ah, leave him alone.”

“Why? Are you hoping to stay the good side of him? Get hired?”

“He's a cultural icon, Tommy.”

“Icon? Is that the same as a fucking chancer?”

He stood on the brakes in time to leave six inches or so between their Nissan and the van ahead.

“Shit — sorry. What's he like, Leyne?”

Minogue waved him back to watching the road.

“The son and him weren't that close, right?”

“He wants to help,” Minogue said. She was a singer, the girl, wasn't she? What was her name? “He told me he'll back me up. Anything I want.”

“Me too?”

“No. Only me. You're from Dublin. But I'm a countryman.”

“Fu —. That's not very nice, is it?”

“Dublin's a kip, Tommy. Mr. Leyne so pronounced it. Sorry, but.”

Malone squirmed in his seat and tapped the steering wheel.

“Anything you want, is that the story?”

“Correct,” replied Minogue. “So that's two anythings now. One from Tynan, one from Leyne.”

Malone shifted again.

“You mind me asking you something there? The Killer's always gotten under Tynan's skin, right? And vice-versa, like. Right?”

Ryeh, Minogue heard. Loike.

“Cause yours truly runs the shop with a shagging hammer in one hand,” said Malone. “We're the elite and all that. His style, right?”

“He has his ways.”

“Yeah, yeah. What I'm trying to say is, well . . . Tynan and you are on, ah, good terms. So Tynan'd be happy if, well, you know what I'm saying.”

The Porsche had attracted a lot of attention ahead. Malone raced the Nissan in first.

“I know this Shaughnessy's high profile,” he went on, “so we're in the spotlight? But, like, Tynan's got to be happy the way you-know-who is off in the States. Specially the timing, right . . .? And with the Larry Smith thing hanging . . .?”

The Porsche headed up Griffith Avenue. Going to the Gravediggers by Glasnevin, Minogue decided. He'd heard from Iseult that was where visiting movie stars and glitterati checked in. Ambience, sawdust on the floor, pints of Guinness.

Minogue didn't rise to the bait. The traffic was slowing again. Malone U-turned back to Home Farm Road.

“When do we get a session with the Mr. and Mrs.?”

“Tomorrow,” Minogue replied. “Mrs. had the most contact with him, the last contact over there.”

Malone turned up the radio at the mention of pursuit. Three suspected shoplifters were legging it down Parnell Street. One of them had flashed a knife. Another had used a baseball bat on a cashier. Two squad cars were heading over. Malone turned it back down.

“That's who it was,” he said. “Now I have it. Only I can't think of her name.”

“Who?”

“Leyne's missus. That's who she looks like, that film star. I can see the face exactly but. Way back, I'm talking about now. The oldies.”

“How oldie, exactly?”

“Ah, ages ago. Your time probably. Tall, cool type. Ended up marrying some king or the like . . .”

“Grace Kelly?”

Malone slapped the wheel and turned to Minogue.

“That's her! How'd you know?”

E
IGHT

T
he lab had sent Eimear Kelly over. She sat by Murtagh's desk reading her notes with an intent frown. Minogue sat on the edge of the desk. How did the windows get so grimy so fast here, he wondered. Éilis clapped bundles of photocopies on the top of the photocopier.