A Carra King (16 page)

Murtagh had photos up on the boards.

“He says he's waiting on ones from two other fellas,” he called over to Minogue. “They're freelancers.”

Minogue scrutinized the faces. Everyone was having a good time apparently. Shaughnessy had a big sunny smile. No guile in it; a bit of a gom really. He held a glass of wine in one. O'Riordan had the hat right, just like Vincent O'Brien, as he held the bridle on the racehorse. Leopardstown, a big race in the calendar: the Prime Foods Cup for four year olds. Shaughnessy was in profile there. Two women, one of them O'Riordan's age. A trainer, by the look of him, up front with O'Riordan too.

The Inspector sipped his tea and looked down the timetable on the board. Murtagh had updated the map with pins for Shaughnessy's Dublin dates too.

Murtagh pointed at a group standing in front of a doorway.

“That one there,” he said. “That's at an auction in Goff's.

The fella on the left is a Saudi Arabian prince. Can you tell? Ha ha.”

O'Riordan was beaming at the Saudi prince. Minogue studied the camera slung over Shaughnessy's shoulder. A sleek-looking model; couldn't tell the make.

“An art exhibition,” said Murtagh. He tapped the photo four times with his finger. “Kind of hoi-polloi there. It was Donohoe took those two. They're in the papers last Sunday week. That's Shaughnessy talking to some art dude. Film people showed up. Julia Whatshername was supposed to show but she didn't.”

“Tough,” said Malone. “Pops up a lot, doesn't he. How'd he get his intros?”

Murtagh shrugged.

“Connected through O'Riordan? He's keen on the socialite bit.”

Fergal Sheehy arrived. Murtagh held up his mug. Sheehy sidled over to Éilis and said something out of the side of his mouth. She scowled and tapped the photocopy bundle one more time, hard. She began dropping the copies on the table.

“Eimear,” said Minogue, “I know you'd like to get home. Start us off, will you?”

Minogue checked his list in his notebook. Blood from the bootlid typed the same as Shaughnessy's. No receipts on the floor of the car. Fine particles from the seat covers in the front not yet matched to belongings found in the car. Nine fags in the ashtray: lipstick traces plain on at least four. Tests? A week at least.

“Eimear,” said Minogue. “The inventory from the boot again. Have ye tried all the clothes for fibre matches?”

“All the jackets. Yes.”

There were signs of someone's efforts to wipe prints. Lab staff had lasered the seats for latent prints and had found plenty. The comparisons were started already.

“The hairs you're talking about,” said Murtagh. “Emerald gave me a list of customers they'd rented the Escort to. The car's only six months old. There's a total of eleven separate contracts on it, all of them tourists. Holland, the States. Germany. Some of the staff at Emerald are allowed to take the cars home, too. And there's delivery drivers and cleaners, too.”

Minogue read down the inventory again. Michelin was misspelled.

“So far the wallet and the passport,” he said. “Camera, video camera — did he declare stuff on arrival?”

Murtagh shook his head.

“Nothing, but it'll take a final search tomorrow at Customs to make sure.”

“Any start on a Bórd Fáilte office, John? Visitor's books?”

Murtagh bit his lip and scribbled on his notepad.

“I'll start right after. Slipped my mind.”

“He wasn't packing much for a jet-setter,” said Malone. “Four shirts including what he had on when he was killed. Jeans, two other pairs of pants. Shoes, well three pairs.”

There was no booze in the car. Shaughnessy smoked. There were wrappers from bars of chocolate, two empty Pepsi cans, fragments of crisps, apple cores. They found paper hankies, the inside of an
Irish Times
. He studied the list of books and maps again. Two all-Ireland roadmaps but no marks on them. An ordinance survey for Donegal with a stamp on it from a shop in Donegal town.
Life in Early
Ireland
by Professor Seán O'Tuama. Hardly meant drunken nightclub louts wavering in the middle of the street at 3 a.m.

A Bórd Fáilte accommodations book had been folded open at Donegal. There were two national monuments and sites books. Minogue had spotted one of the titles browsing in the Official Publications office in Molesworth Street himself and wondered if anybody ever bought them.
Land and
People in Early Christian Ireland
. A dictionary of Irish place-names. Had Shaughnessy written postcards? Minogue blew his nose as quietly as he could.

“Eimear,” he said then. “Are ye finished with the books? Prints, I mean.”

She told him they'd need another day at least to fluoroscope all the books. He'd loved Ireland, the mother had said; had thought of moving here.

“Ah, ye're great, Eimear,” he said. “Now I know it's early, but maybe ye had something on placing the car at all? Those plastic shopping bags in the boot?”

They were generic to the shopping chain all over the country.

“Shit,” said Malone.

She'd already sent one receipt found in a bag to a man in the head office of Powers supermarkets to locate the shop. It was dated for two weeks ago.

Minogue leafed through the shots of the boot again.

“The damage to the car — John, did you phone Emerald on that?”

“I did. It's news to them. They have no record from previous rentals.”

“What broke the panel over the spare wheel? Because he travelled light . . .?”

Sheehy cleared his throat.

“I'd be thinking I put the two things on the same line. The bang on the bottom of the car and the broken panel there over the spare wheel.”

“What,” said Malone. “You mean a big load in the back, and that broke it?”

“Going over a good-sized bump, and you with a load in the back, sure you'd give it a right good belt, so you would.”

“A boreen, are you saying, Fergal?”

“I am. And if you didn't know the road. And if it was nighttime . . .”

“And if you were pissed,” said Malone.

Murtagh tapped on his watch. It was three minutes to six. Minogue nodded.

Murtagh rose and wheeled in Kilmartin's Trinitron. Minogue asked Eimear about the hair from the comb. He received approximately the answer he expected. It was pretty well useless until more hair from the same person was had. Minogue thanked her. Did she want to hang around and see whatever they'd put in from the press conference? She declined and asked for squad autographs instead. Malone told her about the Works stuck at the airport, the autograph for his ma. Sheehy offered her an overused Northsider joke about a marriage proposal. Eimear Kelly, a champion middle distance runner for Dublin, starting with her primary school days in Finglas, asked Sheehy if Kerry people had learned to cook their food yet. Malone opined that he'd heard Kerry people hadn't even finessed it to killing their food before they started chewing it.

Sheehy affected to be stoical and even gently sage about Dubliners. He stroked his lip, sighed, and started on the airport details. There were twenty something — wait, twenty-three — vehicles still in the car park checked in the same time or before Shaughnessy's. There was no way to pin Shaughnessy's car to a time until all the others had been claimed.

“People actually leave their cars in a car park in the airport for days on end?” Malone asked.

“Gas, isn't it,” said Sheehy. “The most of them are only a few days, but it's getting popular.”

“If he was done outside and then the car was parked at the airport,” said Malone, “then someone had enough of a cool head to dust the shagging trail by taking the ticket from the car.”

“Or a clean-up man after the event,” said Minogue.

Murtagh turned up the volume. The first shot of the news item was of the whole table. A voice-over introduced Mrs. Shaughnessy and played the last of her words. A tear glittered but didn't run.

“Here, look,” said Malone when Minogue came on. “You're baldier than I thought you were, er, boss.”

The next shot was of Tynan. It was prefaced by a remark that the Gardai needed the help of the public. The Garda Commissioner stared out at the viewers as he spoke. The Iceman indeed, thought Minogue. The help-line number appeared on the screen. Then the newscast veered off to a civil war in Africa.

A phone was ringing already. Murtagh lifted it and waved it at Minogue.

“You're on the telly,” said Iseult.

“You're in the paper,” he said. “A paper, anyway.”

“Looked quite extinguished I'd have to say,” she said. “Tie done up, the hair combed.”

Minogue's head had begun to feel very heavy.

“Thanks for the slagging now,” he said. “I don't get half enough on the job.”

“Ah grow up,” said his daughter. “Has Ma seen the
Neighbours
thing yet?”

He watched Sheehy pointing to the entry to the car park on the map of the airport. Eastlands, they called it. They christened car parks now?

“I don't think so, love. Why don't you phone her, find out?”

“Ah, I couldn't. That'd be showing off!”

“Better you explain it before she sees it cold herself.”

“What do you mean, ‘cold'? And this ‘explain' bit?”

“Well, phone her up and do whatever gostering and the like you want.”

“I thought you were beyond that kind of thing. Since when does art need to be — ah, now I get it. She's going to think it has to do with . . .”

“That's right. Think it over, now. I have to go. We expect to be busy. People phoning like.”

“Oh, the brush-off now, is it? Well I've me own things to do, you know.”

Minogue pushed his fingertips hard into his temples. Touchy, he'd forgotten.

“We'll talk later, can we, love? You're taking everything handy now, I hope?”

“It's not a
disease
, Da. You're like Pat: ‘Sit down, dear. I'll do that, dear.'”

The Inspector squashed the urge to ask about Pat, how his lectures were going. Iseult's husband lectured three days a week in Limerick. Kathleen had been sharply rebuffed again the other day with her inquiries. She had been petrified to learn from Iseult herself that she, seven months pregnant, had been waist high in the sea by Killiney one evening recently. What in the name of God did she do that for? Wasn't it cold, wasn't the water dirty, couldn't she have lost her footing even with Orla there? Didn't she know how dangerous the tides were there? Iseult had cut her off. Didn't Kathleen know about intrauterine intelligence? That babies learn so much in the womb? Imprinting? That they respond to music and talk?

Minogue remembered Kathleen trying to understand what Iseult was saying. He had turned up to a lunch date with Iseult to find her sound asleep on a seat in a great hall in the National Gallery. She was sprawled under an enormous picture, with a guide tiptoeing up and down next to her. Imprinting, she told him while she ate a meal bigger than his: her baby would feel the beauty she felt. A piano recital at the opening of a Cubist exhibition was proof, she told him. She'd never felt him — or her — move around so much.

“It'd please me to know you're not going to be bungee jumping or the like.”

“Ah, don't be fussing! I'm only going out into the bay proper, for a real dip.”

“You're serious? I can't tell. I want to sleep — ”

“It's all arranged. Orla's da. He has a boat.”

“Any chance you'd swap that for a walk in the woods by Katty Gallagher?”

“What are you going to do, roll me up to the top?”

“I might. Tully, then — no climbing? A little pick-me-up in Jerry Byrnes on the way home — ”

“— Oh you're cruel, so you are! I haven't had a pint since I found out.”

“Sorry. I forgot. Watch me drinking one then, can't you. Imprint that?”

“Ah, you're a bad pill, Da!”

The smell of fresh tea brewing had made Minogue even dopier. He nibbled slowly on the biscuits. Nearly eight million a year passing through Dublin airport. He listened to the two detectives Murtagh had detailed to handle the call-ins. No, he assured one of them, they didn't have to okay a follow-up by him. Murtagh was the ringmaster for communications within the squad, or what was now technically a task force. What procedures need they follow to secure resources from other Garda departments, a Serious Crime specialist, for example, one of the detectives wanted to know? Demand instant compliance, Minogue had murmured. Only half joking, he told the most visibly surprised, a Liam Brophy new to the pool from Kevin Street station. Run it first by John Murtagh if he, the Inspector, was not there.

He reminded them that all lines in were monitored and recorded. He warned them again that while most of their calls would be coming in through the switchboard, there could be directs. These were often the most valuable. They needed to be handled with extreme care. The request for a trace was automated now: the orange button to the side of the redial. Signal immediately to a squad member if a direct came on: don't worry about being overcautious. A corpulent, fuzzy-redhead detective named Boyle asked if they'd be detailed interviews on follow-ups.