A Carra King (31 page)

“Looked like she was pregnant,” Malone murmured. “The bloating, like.”

He lifted his head and squinted at Minogue.

“Crabs, is that what he said?”

“I think so, Tommy. A guess.”

“Jesus. If I had a known that.”

Minogue closed his notebook and slid it into the pouch in his carry-all.

“I didn't write a bleeding word, boss. Sorry.”

“It's okay. Do you think you'll make it?”

Malone looked around at the lockers and the stacked boxes.

“Well, Jases, I'm not staying here and that's a fact.”

An orderly came in and began taking his clothes out of a locker. Minogue exchanged the greeting with his own estimates of the weather and quick agreement with the orderly's scorn for forecasts. Malone wrapped his boots in a plastic shopping bag and closed his travel bag.

Malone didn't look much better by the time Minogue finished his call from the phone at reception. Noonan would have a car over for them in five minutes.

“Cup of something, Tommy?”

“Not in here.”

They watched an elderly woman inch her way down the hall using a walking contraption. Is that in his own near future too, Minogue wondered.

“Well that was the worst yet,” Malone said. “She must have broken every . . . Ah well, what's the point of talking about it.”

At least five days in the water, was Kelly's estimate. The marks of the string or rope had gone maroon. The x-rays showed a broken spine and a fractured skull from the impact of the drop. Her lungs did not have enough water in them to suggest drowning. Minogue had welcomed with relief that numbness that had come over him when he had looked over Aoife Hartnett's body for the first time. His hands had made notes, while some other part of him had issued the questions of Kelly. He remembered his repeated queries for clarifications, the patient fencing with Kelly's irritated and defensive reluctance to say anything conclusive about how long ago Aoife Hartnett had been killed.

“Hoey told me he never got used to it,” Malone said. “It's why he walked.”

The drive outside was wet but it had stopped raining again. Minogue was pleased to see the expansively moustached and double-chinned Garda McGurk of the drooping eyelids and the rock concert query driving the squad car up to the door.

“There's our man,” he said.

“Are they looking after you?” was McGurk's greeting. Minogue sat in beside him and sized up the face offering the gently mocking glances.

“In a manner of speaking now, and thanks.”

“Back to the station is it,” McGurk said.

“To be sure. CI Noonan's in residence still?”

“He is, he is. Ye'll save the barley sandwiches until later on, will ye?”

“For a while, I'd say.”

“Six months or so,” said Malone.

McGurk leaned over the wheel to check traffic by the entrance to the hospital.

“Bad, was it?”

“As bad as you'd expect,” Minogue said.

“The poor woman,” was all McGurk said for the rest of the trip to the station. Minogue noted the frown settling over this affable, overweight rock fan he had taken a liking to. A Romeo, he wondered, charming them into bed with drollery and consideration.

Noonan had tea ready. He finished a radio exchange with a patrol car about registration numbers on a traveller's van. He ushered them into his office.

“There's a long day's work done,” he said. “Terrible, isn't it?”

“It is that. It is.”

Noonan slid out a sheet of photocopy paper from under a tray.

“I phoned about the car,” he said. “Here's a partial list so far. She was in the back seat.”

“There's no key in the ignition?” Minogue asked.

Noonan shook his head.

Malone looked over Minogue's shoulder at the list.

“A tent bejases,” he said. “Sleeping bags . . . no stuff that'd be worth robbing? Didn't she have a camera or stuff?”

“No wallets or valuables yet,” said Noonan. “Now isn't that something. What was the story with the American's car up in Dublin?”

“Nothing there either,” muttered Minogue. “No.”

“There could be stuff down in the rocks there,” said Noonan. “At the bottom of the cliffs. It must have hit a right wallop.”

Minogue looked up, met his eyes.

“I daresay. Yes. We'll need to look into that.”

Noonan refilled his cup from the teapot.

“You'll be wanting to make calls here, is it?”

Minogue watched Noonan fill his own cup. Bony fingers, sinews: a townie. Minogue tested the chair back and crossed his legs.

“Thanks,” he said. “Will you release the remains to Dublin for the PM?”

“I will, indeed.”

“I'll be wanting the car to be loaded on and sent up, too.”

Noonan nodded. Minogue looked down Noonan's list again.

“They had a bad time of getting her out of the car,”

Noonan said.

“Well, you're ahead of us there, er, Tom.”

“Ah, there was talk. The fellas taking the car in off the boat there.”

Minogue nodded.

“Car's rightly smashed up now after that. A straight drop so far as I can see.”

“I imagine so,” Minogue agreed.

“The remains would be, well . . . sure I suppose it'd be the same as a head-on. Without the seat belts maybe?”

Noonan looked from Minogue to Malone and back. Malone jiggled his mug and took a mouthful of tea.

“I'd be obliged for the use of the phone for a while.”

Noonan sat back and then stood.

“Fire away. It's all yours.”

“We can — ”

“Not a bit of it. Go right ahead and use the office. I'll be outside there.”

Minogue took out his notebook and flipped to his telephone list. He looked around Noonan's office again while he tried to muster his instructions and queries for Murtagh to relay to the teams in Dublin.

The photos of Shaughnessy at the dos, the call-ins from Donegal needed mining properly. He lingered on the wood-framed photo of the group by a door somewhere. Noonan's broad smile, the uniform, Sergeant's stripes on the ceremonial grey uniform. The hair looked wispy and soon to be departed even then. Ten years ago maybe? Minogue fingered the number for Castlebar Garda station from the photocopy he taped into each of his notebooks. He turned the phone around and found a line out.

“I'll try Castlebar, Tommy. See if there's anything from the Micra before they wrap it.”

A Sergeant Gerry Murphy handled scenes of the crimes. He had bagged the loose items and wrapped the car again.

“Thanks very much, now. Do ye have transport for it to the State Lab up in Dublin?”

Murphy replied that they did indeed. Had he time to go over a preliminary with Minogue? He did.

Minogue added to the list Noonan had given him. Accordioned: was that now a technical term? Passenger compartment had been severely crushed. All seats out of their anchors. Anchors, Minogue wondered. Roof down at the front. Impact seems to have been on the bonnet, shared with the edge of the roof. The weight at the front, Murphy tried to explain. Minogue drew what he hoped looked like a hatchback. It had gone over nose first then? Most likely forward, yes. A bit of momentum seems to have carried it over the ninety degrees as it fell. Maps, carry-all bags with clothes, a rucksack, women's shoes. He waited for a pause before interrupting.

“Still no effects, Gerry? Handbag?”

“None, no.”

“How much have ye done?”

“Well, we've emptied the car in actual fact.”

“The boot, too?”

“We have.”

Minogue looked down the list again.

“Is there something we should maybe have an eye out for, er, Inspector?”

It wasn't sarcasm, Minogue realized. He breathed out and rubbed at his eyes.

“Bits of string,” he said. “A rope maybe?”

“No sign.”

“Ashtrays?”

The dashboard had been shattered but the ashtray had stayed in place. There had been a gap and the water had worked in. Some fibres from the filters floating free had been bagged for the lab.

“I'm surprised there's not more. Stuff belonging to a man — shoes, clothes?”

“No,” said Murphy. “Not yet identified, I'd better say, I suppose.”

Had he come across that pushy, Minogue wondered.

“We're not playing paper chase here now, Gerry. Say what's on your mind.”

“Well,” Murphy said. “We don't want to make a slip here now, being as, well, it's tied in with the thing up in Dublin. The American?”

How could they not know, Minogue heard the voice mock him within, Murphy and Noonan and McGurk and half the bloody country, and it on the radio and telly?

“It's a tin opener you'd be needing to get at some bits,” Murphy added.

Pushed up that track, Minogue wondered. Shoved off with another car? The keys could be anywhere off the cliffs, too.

“The ignition was definitely off?” Minogue tried. “No bit of broken-off key?”

“No. We have the steering column in one piece.”

Minogue let his Biro drop on the paper. He had drawn a box with a circle inside, and another box inside the circle. Put Shaughnessy in the damn car for us, he heard the voice again: that's all we want. Make one thing easy for us today, for the love of God. He looked down the list again.

“Rubbish in the car, Gerry? Tins of Coke or that?”

“Pepsi, actually. Two empties, one torn up in bits — by hand. You know the way people do it with the aluminum ones?”

“Not from the smash?”

“No. Peeled, one of them.”

“Pepsi,” Minogue said aloud. Malone looked over and raised his eyebrows. A sign of nerves, the shredding of a can during a row, to keep the hands busy?

“I wonder what we could lift off them after a few days of seawater . . .”

“Depends,” Murphy said. “Ask Eimear above at the lab in Dublin. Alkaline deposits and brine . . . could be. They're bagged and ready to go to the lab anyhow.”

As in: don't be asking things we can't deliver. Minogue wondered if he had missed other hints earlier. He thanked Murphy and remembered to ask for his phone number again.

McGurk was sitting at a desk by the door to the public office of the Garda station pretending to work. Minogue paused in the doorway. Noonan again told him it'd be no bother to set him up in the Western Hotel.

“Thanks now, but we'll go along now tonight as soon as we have the items from the car and the remains.”

Noonan looked skeptical. Minogue couldn't tell if it was annoyance.

“Sure there's expertise already over the site now,” Minogue added. “And ye're doing a first-class job of it over at the Fields.”

“An oul newspaper,” said Noonan. “Cigarette packages. That's not much.”

“You have a driver who'll do the run to Dublin tonight?”

“I do,” said Noonan, and made a shy smile. “Beamish, the undertaker will do it. ‘There are no complaints about Beamish' as they say. Will you take a lift with him?”

Minogue didn't know, as he thought about it later, if he'd done it for a dare, or because Noonan had said the driver was fast and knew the routine. Malone muttered something about the culchies looking for a chance to slag them, sending them back to Dublin in a hearse. Minogue shrugged that off.

McGurk led them out to the yard. There was a break in the clouds to the west and beams of light had broken through in the distance. The air had gone cooler. Malone still had no appetite.

“A bit of cake before we hit the trail,” said Minogue. “And brewed coffee?”

McGurk piloted them to the Western Hotel. Vivaldi was playing in the foyer. They sat at a table across from the reception desk. Malone walked around, stopping to eye the goings-on in the street outside. Then he went wandering.

McGurk ordered a piece of cheesecake. He asked Minogue about prices in Dublin: the pictures, a dinner for two — not an all-out type dinner now, just a good one — a flat in Donnybrook. Minogue almost smiled. McGurk had heard there were new nightclubs in Dublin, really quite the thing. Had the Inspector heard of them?

Minogue was about to try an answer he'd heard from gossip with Éilis and John Murtagh about prostitutes setting up in those new apartments when Malone reappeared from the lounge. He flicked his head toward the doorway. Minogue followed him into the lounge.

There were a half-dozen men at the bar, some couples at tables. The television was high over the bar, ignored. Beside Kilmartin's face were some kinds of charts. Another one slid out. Direct quotes and the date prominent . . . “no developments in the case . . .” Four months ago. Larry Smith's brother walking with his widow down a Dublin street. Another clip of a taped scene: the sheet over Smith out in Baldoyle with the blood from his pulped head soaked in. Minogue caught a glimpse of his own back and the bald spot Kathleen had taken to tickling after a few jars had made her frisky, as he stood with Kilmartin by the sheet.

The news reader reappeared. Gemma O'Loughlin's name, a columnist with the
Irish Times
. Papers turned over, the next item the camera slid left: a European Union meeting of agriculture ministers.

“Shite, meet fan,” said Malone.

“What did I miss?” Minogue asked.

Malone looked around.

“‘Allegations of a cover-up,'” he said. “And Christy Smith sitting there with Larry's wife. He has a leg up on her, I heard. Tough talk. ‘Hold them responsible.' Finger pointing. ‘Public inquiry.' Shite like that.”

“Names mentioned?”

“No, I didn't hear them. They mentioned the squad all right. But no names. ‘Senior Gardai' aware of it, it said.”

Minogue made his way back to the doorway into the foyer.

“Any reply from us?”

“Something about Garda sources denying it. And saying that we'd been bollocked by the family when we'd gone looking for clues anyway. Jases, the nerve.”