John Brady - A Carra ring

“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 old man grasping his arm: anything, he’d said. The yellow skin, the scar reaching up to his neck. Had Leyne known?

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

Eileen 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, did you say?”

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

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

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 I hear her complaining here not too long ago. There was some holdup 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 Ronan 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 letdown 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 pallsy-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 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?” asked 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 MacCool 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 Mairead O’Reilly.

“There was something at the place, Tommy.”

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