John Brady - Unholy Ground

"Mr Combs was English?" Minogue called out.

"I believe so, sir," said the technician, a brick-red-faced young man with the beginnings of a porter-belly. He had the heavy blond eyebrows of Norse descendants in County Wexford.

"Yes, sir. They have his passport and everything taken away in the bags, but he was definitely from across the water."

Minogue turned toward the window again. When he didn't hear the two moving, he turned back to them. They couldn't help his puzzlement any more than he could himself.

"Thanks very much, lads."

He prowled the other rooms upstairs. A bedroom that Combs must have used, with the clothes torn off the bed. The mattress had been slashed on both sides. Looking for money in there…? A bathroom with new fixtures. The medicine box had been emptied out, too. Next door was an empty room the size of a box-room. The old man had been economical to the point of asceticism with furnishings. Minogue kept expecting to open a door on a room that would be cluttered with the stuff which should fill houses. There was none. He couldn't decide if the sense of incompleteness here was a sign of transience or a permanent feature of an austere life. If this was it, Minogue thought, then the old man had led a lonely life.

Downstairs again, Minogue spied Hoey sitting on the kitchen doorstep. He was lighting a cigarette. Minogue looked into the kitchen- Almost like snow. Eerie. A fly was trapped between the curtain and the glass. It buzzed noisily, throwing itself against the glass, then rested. The outline on the linoleum tiles was the shape of a body lain on its side with the knees drawn up a bit, arms into the chest. A flash and the motorised ejection whirr of the Polaroid startled Minogue. He had been leaning on the button. Iijit…

The living-room had boasted no knick-knacks, it seemed. Books borrowed from the public library still lay atop a low table, the chaos on the floor all about it. There were no plants in the room, no pictures on the walls. Two ashtrays, both clean: copies of the Irish Times; magazines scattered on the floor. A colour telly with rabbit ears had been toppled, the screen cracked. The gravid atmosphere of the house begin to weigh on Minogue. He sat down on the doorstep next to Hoey.

"Who do we have available as of tomorrow morning, Shea?"

"There's you and me, sir. Pat Keating, of course. The two detectives from Stepaside; I know one of them-Driscoll. There's two Gardai from Stepaside taking statements and feeding them to Driscoll for us. I phoned in to get a crop of likeues off the Criminal Record Office… Johnnie Carey is back in court tomorrow again and it might be for most of the week. The pub stabbing back in March. The defence threw a surprise in last Friday and they're rubbing Johnnie hard on how he got the confession. He's lost to us for the week, I'd say."

Hoey drew on the cigarette. Minogue had a sudden lust for a cigarette himself. Keating stepped around the seated policemen.

"Well, the percentages so far," Keating began with a yawn, "tell me he was killed right in the kitchen. I was talking to the lads who went through the kitchen… "

Minogue's attention was taken by the lurid light from the spots flaring against the gable wall. A uniformed Garda walked gingerly by them, nodding.

"… Nothing to suggest a struggle in or near the door. Not dragged in either."

"Heavy class of man anyhow," Hoey added.

"Can we place him at all yet, for the Saturday?" asked Minogue.

"Driscoll and the Stepaside lads are chipping away there, sir," Hoey reminded him. "They know the area. Never knew this Combs, though. A reclam-… a recl-"

"A recluse," Minogue said.

"That's it. A loner. Mrs Hartigan says he took a jar in the pub all right. He wasn't a total hermit."

"In a bit of a state, I suppose. Is she at home now?" Minogue went oh. Hoey flicked open his notebook.

"Here's her number. The house is about half a mile back the road."

Minogue rose and yawned. Hoey stood then. Keating stared off at some point in the darkness beyond the oasis of light. Minogue followed Hoey down the lane. Hoey yawned again as he got into Minogue's Fiat, holding his notebook to his mouth. Keating took the radio-car which he and Hoey had driven out from Dublin.

"So the Killer is back on his feet," Hoey whispered through a yawn. Minogue spied Hoey's embarrassment with a glance. Kilmartin's nickname had slipped out. He smiled faintly at Hoey in the green glow of the dash light. Hoey rubbed his nose and switched on the interior light. He looked through his notes of his interview with Mrs Hartigan. Minogue drove off into the night. Kilmartin, Killer, he mused. Hoey absent-mindedly lit another cigarette. Hardly anyone has nicknames anymore, Minogue realised. What was that a sign of? Progress?

The nickname originated with quips which dated back to the renaming of the Murder Squad. Unlike its like-named counterpart in London, from which the name and the organisational structure had been derived, the Squad's name had gone under to the dictates of more hygienic prose. That prose had drifted in on airwaves and print from the American century which had lain offshore until the late 1950s. Irish people were now expected to rationlise their lives. They should now express opinions about the balance of payments and to use words from the new religion, words like fulfillment, relationship, interaction…

The Murder Squad had emerged from this confusion as the Investigation Section. It formed a branch of the Technical Bureau, itself a branch of the Central Detective Unit. The CDU's new headquarters was based close to the City Centre in Harcourt Square, and CDU detectives rubbed shoulders with the other glamour boys of the Security Section, the Special Branch and the Serious Crime Squad. Austrian-made folding submachine-pistols, souped-up pursuit cars, computerisedradio and telephone links, border shoot-outs… the whole shemozzle, as Kilmartin was wont to remark caustically over a Friday afternoon pint to Minogue. Television policemen, he called them.

The Murder Squad's transfer from the claustrophobia of Dublin Castle had brought it to St John's Road, close to Garda Headquarters in The Phoenix Park. Detectives working on the Murder Squad didn't mind a bit of glamour themselves. When other Gardai would ask them what it was like to work in the Investigation Section, they were told that it was murder, handily consonant with the nickname of the head of the section-the Killer himself, Kilmartin. The conceit around Kilmartin's nickname added to the Squad's reputation as being driven, meticulous and successful.

Less out of delicacy than sympathy, Minogue did not air his view that Jimmy Kilmartin was such a tiger abroad because he was a kitten at home.

Mrs Hartigan's husband hovered uneasily by the door to the parlour. The Hartigan's house was a County Council labourer's cottage, scrupulously clean and suffused with the smell of a mixed grill. Framed photographs of weddings and children were marshalled on a dresser next to the door. Mrs Hartigan perched in the corner of a thickly stuffed sofa. A restless poodle lay across her oblivious feet. Two patches of colour stood out on her pallid cheeks. Her eyes were ringed red. Below the eyes her face seemed to sag. Like a stroke-victim, Minogue thought. Hoey sat next to a new television set while Minogue fell back into a tired spring armchair.

"To be sure, Mr Hartigan," Minogue looked up at the grizzled pensioner in the doorway. "Rest assured that your good wife will suffer no duress."

Hartigan scratched skeptically at a leathery ear.

"The doctor says she should be taking it cushy. She has blood pressure."

"Mr Hartigan. Our best opportunity for catching the person who committed this crime is with quick work. As much information as we can gather, as quickly as we can gather it."