John Brady - A Carra ring

“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?”

“I’ll pass it on to them, boss.”

“Any life on the phones?”

“Nothing.”

Minogue released the Biro he’d been bending.

“When’s the PM scheduled, John?”

“Hers? There was a phone call in from Donavan’s office to notify for attendance. He can do it this afternoon or early tomorrow. Who will we send?”

Malone, that’s who, Minogue had to conclude.

“By the way,” said Malone. “Now that I think of it, when are we ever going to pick up your hardware?”

“What hardware?”

“Come on, you know. We were issued, remember?”

“Not now, anyway.”

“Why not? Didn’t you tell me that fella Kevin Whatsisname passed on something, something about the Smiths?”

Minogue stared at the clock on the dashboard, willing it to change its numbers. He shouldn’t have mentioned what Kevin Kelly had told him in Bewleys.

“Is it the Smiths blathering has you thinking about this again?”

“Maybe,” Malone said. “What about back when you and the Killer were up against a crowd down from the North? When was that, seven or eight years ago? There was bullets flying then, wasn’t there?”

“Seven years, yes,” said Minogue. “The time of the Christmas bombings.”

“Did you then?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

Minogue studied the tips of his shoes. More than scuff there now. They’d go in a few months.

“Well, I wouldn’t have one in the house, Tommy. That was all.”

Malone jammed the gearshift into second and floored the accelerator Minogue heard him swear under his breath.

“I don’t get paid enough to try to talk sense into you,” Malone said. “Why don’t you just sign it out and park it in the cabinet then?”

“It’s still optional, Tommy. ”

“They should make you.”

“They can’t make me bring a gun into my home. And that’s that.”

“Even if it went to compulsory issue?”

“They’ve never made us. We call in the heavies if we think there are guns.”

“You think Larry Smith’s mob doesn’t have guns?”

Minogue studied his shoes again.

“There’s seventeen holes in that squad car,” said Malone. “I’d say that’s a serious message.”

Maybe they should really send the bill to Gemma O’Loughlin, Minogue thought. Printing that drivel about the Larry Smith solution from a lubricated, giddy Kilmartin showboating for his cronies at the Garda Club.

“They’d know where we live, you know,” said Malone.

Minogue couldn’t disagree. He’d heard enough over the years of the open threats delivered one-on-one to Guards by the Smiths. The names of their children, even; where their parents lived.

“Hold the horses there,” he said. “Are you going to tell me it’s at home I should be strutting around with a gun in me apron and me doing the dishes?”

“Apron is right,” said Malone, and looked away. Minogue let the silence hang.

“I can’t win this one, can I,” said Malone at last. “You get that thick culchie head of yours down and you won’t budge.”

Minogue let the silence hang. He thought of Mick Fahy’s halfhearted attempt to convince him when they were signing out Malone’s at the armory. It’s not the old days, Matt: they all have them and they use them; there’s no respect for the uniform anymore. He thought about Trigger Little, the heaviness in the air around him. Wife and three kids, separated. Did Malone himself actually like guns, he wondered. And why did he not know this about a man he’d worked with for over a year? Driving around Dublin with an automatic pistol in the back of your pants, now that was progress.

“Back to the case, Tommy.”

“What about it?”

“If the airport is beginning to dry up, well, that’s not the end of the world. We have a couple traveling together and two cars waiting to give us leads. It takes so long though, that’s the frustrating part.”

Malone turned into the Coombe. Minogue returned the stares of two nattily dressed men leaning on a silver BMW. One of the men looked away.

“Want to bet how that was paid for,” Malone said. “That Beemer, with the two music video charlies lying up against it?”

He rolled down the window and spat out a piece of a nail he’d been nibbling on. The air smelled of decaying fruit and exhaust smoke. A pound shop was playing “Only Starting” from the Works’ first CD. One of the speakers seemed to be blown. A tweeter.

Malone seemed to be changing gears just for something to do now.