A Carra King (38 page)

“I'll phone you when I know, John.”

“She was a higher up. Right?”

“Yes. Hard-working, a lot of responsibility. Knew her stuff. She mixed, ‘networked' — all that.”

“How does she, how did she, connect with Shaughnessy?”

“Still don't know,” said Minogue. “Maybe we can put him in her apartment. There's a team collecting there. An affair, I don't know. A few things seem to be coming through. They seem to have travelled together. They didn't want to attract attention, maybe even to the extent of sneaking into Bed & Breakfasts separately.”

“The lack of stuff coming in from the appeal, is it?”

Minogue wondered how Tynan knew.

“I'd be thinking they went to some trouble to avoid people.”

He heard something rubbing over the mouthpiece at Tynan's end. Muffled voices in his office. The rubbing stopped.

“You're sure?” he heard Tynan say to someone else.

“Excuse me,” said Tynan then. “Two conversations going here. So I'll be hearing from you later in the day on this. Even if you're annoyed.”

“Fair enough.”

“No word from James?”

“No. Am I to pass on a message if he does phone?”

“You could. We may shortly be getting information that would allow him off the stage here with the media. In relation to Mr. Smith.”

“Is it solid?”

“I don't know. It happened a half-hour ago. This fella has been known awhile but didn't stand out for any particular reason then.”

“Do I know him?”

“It's not a Guard, that's what I want you to know. A certain person started asking his barrister some very odd questions today at the Special Criminal Court. He's facing a third conviction for an armed robbery a few months ago. He's looking for a soft spot to land on.”

“Does anyone know about this outside the Guards on the court yet?”

“No,” said Tynan. “I'll be phoning an editor in a few minutes. If they're smart they'll hold fire on the first article until we get a proper look at this fella.”

Minogue pushed the top of his Biro harder into the paper and let it go. He didn't realize how annoyed he had become in the past few moments.

“So it'll be okay again to have a few jars and wild blather with our colleagues above in the club?”

“Was it ever otherwise? Listen, now. There's something you need to know. This Freeman character phoned me.”

“Leyne?”

“Yes. I asked to be kept informed. It's to be kept quiet, but Leyne had told him to keep me up if anything happened. Very confidential.”

Minogue looked at a break in the clouds over the south city.

“You won't be able to talk to Leyne, Matt.”

He thought of the grasping of his arm: anything, he'd said. The yellow skin, the scar reaching up to his neck. Had Leyne known?

“This Freeman character, his pot-boy,” said Tynan. “He phoned. They have Leyne on a machine. The consensus there is that he won't be coming back to us.”

T
WENTY
-O
NE

E
ileen Brogan looked up from the page at him. Minogue had been thinking of a hospital room. Machines, tubes, wires.

“Sorry,” he said.

“July,” she said again. “That was the end of that stage. There was a do here, a reception. We went over to Sheehan's pub after the approval was confirmed.”

“Then it passed on to the construction phase then, did you say?”

“Yes. All the approvals were in, I heard.”

“The exhibition was the launch of the actual building for the centre?”

She nodded.

“I don't recall seeing any building work started there,” he said.

“I only know what I read from typing up letters and minutes and that or what I'd hear. But I did hear her complaining here not too long ago. There was some hold up with one of the tenders for drainage work or something. The County Council there weren't doing their job fast enough.”

Her voice began to quiver again.

“She was so meticulous, so . . . She worked so hard. I'd go at half-five and I'd tell her, Aoife, go home would you, for God's sake. I'd feel guilty, and me only a clerk typist really.”

She was trying to stop shivering.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I hadn't realized.”

“No, no,” she said with an edge to her voice now. “I want to do the best I can here now. For Aoife.”

She stared at the Biro Minogue turned against his thumb.

“She wasn't the kind to talk about home life much. Maybe that's because she wasn't married or that. She'd talk about her niece now, or about people she knew.”

“Did she maybe mention things that were on her mind? Upsetting her?”

“You asked me that earlier, I know, and I've been trying to think. I didn't know anything about that few weeks she took off until the afternoon before.”

“You got no impression she resented it?”

“No. I knew she was tired. She wouldn't complain and she'd just carry on, but there was something missing. I'd never have asked her. I used to ask myself, well what would Aoife want, like. Me — I'm just, well there's Rónan and me. Not much room for anything else. No holidays or car, not even a house for God's sake, but me ma and da are great. They're my family again, sort of. Since Tony and that. Aoife hadn't been lucky well in the marriage stakes, I suppose — I thought.”

“You knew something about that?”

“Not really,” she replied. “I mean, nobody told me. But I saw her here — right over there, by the window. I knew she'd been crying. This is months ago. And I kind of knew — well there was a feeling — it was a let-down with a fella. I didn't want to be putting me foot in it. Aoife had her own sort of territory. What would I say?”

“Reserve, do you mean?”

“I suppose. Not snobby now or that. The way a good boss is, not trying to be palsy-walsy or that. Some people found her cool because of it, or they were a bit put out by her being so smart and all. I liked that about her. But I felt so bad for her then. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea,' I remember saying to her. Stupid things you say, you know? She sort of smiled. She knew, I think. That I knew, like. Do you know what I'm saying?” He waited for several moments. She frowned and looked at her hanky.

“What else did you know of that side of Aoife?”

“That's it. There should have been someone for her, that's what's been getting to me this last hour, yes.”

Her eyes went to a corner of the ceiling.

“What about Dermot Higgins, maybe.”

“Dermot, here?”

Minogue nodded. Her lips twitched.

“Ah no, that wasn't on. You'd easy fall for him though, wouldn't you? If you were a girl like. No. Dermot doesn't make a big deal out of it. Everyone knows.”

“What, now?”

“Dermot's gay.”

Minogue tried not to let his bewilderment show. Didn't gay men all have short hair and earrings these days? The giveaway voice and mannerisms?

“She did say something that day, now,” Eileen Brogan began again. “Now, if only I can remember it. I thought it was a person she was talking about. Her ex maybe, but I didn't ask. It was like she was making a crack about it, I don't know, a fish or something. It was something else though, I suppose.”

“What did she say, can you remember?”

Minogue watched her face as she seized on some recollection, met his gaze, then frowned again as she lost it.

“Oh God, if I could remember it . . . it was just that I thought of it when I said fish. Something that sounded like a sissy. I was thinking to myself what kind of a fish is that, a piranha or something. You're no sooner at the top of a hill than you're right back at the bottom again, I think she said. Back where you started. A sissy . . .?”

She dabbed at her eyes again. Minogue didn't push it. He began to arrange the pages. He looked over the poster of the Carra Hill. How many people, how many centuries had it taken to make it. The size of the rocks, how could one person — he looked up at her then.

“Sisyphus?”

Her eyes widened. She nodded once.

“That's what it was, yes. How did you know that?”

Malone leaned against the doorjamb. Minogue looked down at the files he had scanned already.

“Well,” said Malone. “Not one of them worth getting a proper statement out of. How do you like that?”

Minogue sat back.

“Well respected,” said Malone. “Not a bad word about her. Bit of a workaholic. Is that what you're getting, too?”

Minogue nodded. He closed the folder on the pages from the O'Reilly's booklet about Carra Hill and the stone.

“Here, that's the book your woman had down there yesterday,” said Malone.

“It's another copy, Tommy.”

Malone sat on the edge of the desk and looked up at the pictures.

“What's that?” said Malone and pointed at one. “It's like a giant soccer ball there. That big rock.”

“That's the Burren.”

“Who put that big boulder there?”

“God. Some giant. Finn McCool maybe.”

“You were there when it happened, were you.”

“It was always there. The weather did that to it.”

“Don't you just want to put the boot to it, like? Give it a little shove, watch it rolling — hey, wait a minute. Haven't you got a picture of something like that back at the office? That Magoo, Magray . . .?”

“Magritte,” said Minogue. He'd phone Mairéad O'Reilly.

“There was something at the place, Tommy.”

“What? She was strangled, and her car pushed over the cliff, yeah.”

“. . . Something at the place.”

“Like?”

Minogue looked up from the cover of the folder. He thought of O'Reilly's decades of digging, the patient, stubborn mind refusing to give up its belief. Maybe he needed to believe in things to keep going.

“I found these inside that book.”

Malone picked up the photocopies.

“What are the numbers there — wait. They're measurements, yeah. This is part of her job, isn't it?”

Minogue didn't answer. He watched Malone turn some sideways and return each to the back of the sheaf.

“Seen some of 'em before,” said Malone. He dropped them on the desk and looked at Minogue. “In pictures and that.”

Minogue plucked one out and put it on the desk in front of Malone.

“Seen it.”

“Boa Island.”

He dropped another.

“No,” said Malone. “Don't know it.”

“Drumlin. County Roscommon. This one's in the Museum already.”

“Okay,” Malone said. “But so what?”

“I don't know.”

Malone gave his boss a long, slow blink.

“So we'd better get back to work then.”

Minogue gathered the pages again and slid them into the folder.

“They're all heads, Tommy.”

“Good. Try tails next time.”

“She knew the Carra Fields stuff inside out.”

“Right,” said Malone. “That was her job, yeah?”

“That history, the one O'Reilly wrote, the one I took home the other day. There's a page and a half on a description of the stone, the one they say had to be carried up the hill.”

“For the new fella to be crowned? The next king, like?”

“Yes. Why has she all these pictures from all kinds of books and magazines and even tourist brochures in next to that page?”

Malone rubbed his palm on the short hairs over his crown.

“It's her job, boss. Same as we'd, I don't know, make points of comparison with statements or MOs. Scene summaries?”

“There's more to it than that, Tommy.”

Malone stood away from the doorjamb.

“Well, let me ask you something, so,” he said. “How much of what your man wrote is true? I was there yesterday. Even the daughter knows there was stuff made up. Your man was into it all his life, you know. All the legends and stuff — well, I mean, how much of that is just his own inventions? Like, bullshit . . .?”

Minogue made no reply. He looked at his watch instead. Half-two. Well? he heard from Malone. Still he said nothing. He let his cuff over his wrist again. O'Reilly had no sources for what he'd written. A stone the weight of a bull, carried up a hill? Heroic entirely, but best left in myth. Damn. Why hadn't he heard what they'd turned up in her apartment? Phone Murtagh.

Murtagh went slowly down his list.

“Spell that again, John. What's it for, do you know?”

“Antidepressant. It's just the label bit you get from the chemist. She probably took the stuff with her.”

“Current, is it?”

“It is,” Murtagh said. “There's other paraphernalia. Old antibiotics, too.”

“Can we put Shaughnessy at her place? Visiting even?”

“No answer on that. Yet, like.”

“Cigarettes — what did he smoke again?”