John Brady - A Carra ring

O’Reilly tapped on the monitor. Little’s smile dropped off his face. He leaned in over the screen. The camera covering the army bomb disposal lorry drew back to reveal a huddle of figures gathered around what looked to Minogue to be a small tank. The gofer, they called it now, this drone that had been bought with much fanfare from an outfit who’d perfected the design in Belfast.

It began to move, stop, move again. A voice on the radio said “Switching over.” Little touched a button by the monitor and the policemen were staring at pavement and the bottom of a tire. The picture jerked and turned to frame a row of parked cars.

“Aw Christ,” said Little, and he turned away. “They’ll be ten minutes before they send in the damn thing. And for what? This isn’t bomb territory, this thing.”

Little clapped his hands and began rubbing them hard together.

“Here,” he said. “Give you a laugh. Do you know who that was on the phone there? Trying to give me grief? Go on, guess.”

“Your daughter’s new boyfriend,” said Malone.

“No. He’s still in a coma. Try again.”

“We don’t know, Damian,” said Minogue.

“Public Works. That’s who.”

“Who are they?”

“Very funny,” said Little. “Don’t you like them? Streets of Shame?

“ ‘Nobody’s home,’ Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I bet you have all their CDS, you bollocks.”

“Not gone on them,” said Malone. “I’d be more a GOD man these days.”

Little gave a breathless laugh. It took Minogue a moment. Girls Over Dublin, the latest rage group. Little looked over at Minogue.

“Well, Matt,” he said. “ ‘Do you believe in GOD?’ ”

Minogue kept his eyes on the screen. He remembered the pictures on the ads for their smash hit CD. They were like those Chagall pictures, couples flying over a city. Nice. Only one of them, a Fiona, had claimed she was lesbian, he’d heard, and the bishops and archbishops had been smart enough to keep their mouths shut, let GOD’S publicity genius spin in the wind over the free controversy they wanted.

“Girls Over Dublin,” Minogue said. “Or the Man Himself, Damian?”

“Ah, what’s the use,” Little said. “You’re in the Dark Ages, the pair of you. Get with it. It was their big-shot manager on the phone, not the celebrities themselves. Should have heard him, I’m telling you. You know him — Daly? Baldy, tries to wear a ponytail. Jumped-up gobshite.”

Minogue looked up from the screen.

“So Public Works are held up here are they,” said Minogue. “Along with us ordinary mortals.”

“How’d you get this number, says I to him,” Little went on. “This line is a vital link in our communications. ‘Senior officer at Garda HQ,’ says he. Like I’m supposed to fall down and adore or something. ‘We have a very tight schedule,’ says he. Rules don’t apply to him of course.”

The drone was on the move again. It spun slowly. Minogue caught a glimpse of several cars.

“So he starts to push,” said Little. ‘“Couldn’t we just go around the side and slip away,’ says he. ‘We have a private aircraft.’ Well Dublin Airport is closed down, says I. In its entirety. No exceptions. On my orders. Now get off my fucking phone or I’ll run you in for obstructing the Guards. You fucking weasel.”

Minogue almost smiled. What would the celebrity manager have made of Little’s gentle tone, the delivery.

“Is that what you said,” he said to Little.

The lights reflected off wet tarmacadam were throwing glare at the camera now.

“Nearly told him to set his hair on fire and put it out himself with a lump hammer,” said Little. “Christ, you’d think he’d be thanking us. If the car’s wired, goes up… Well, I mean, I know it’s not going to happen, but…”

Minogue looked up.

“So: not a word of a warning here, Damian?”

Little shook his head.

“Ask ’em how long more,” he said to O’Reilly.

O’Reilly adjusted the earpiece and bent the stalk for the microphone while he waited. Little tugged at his ear and swore under his breath. The drone wasn’t moving. Minogue glanced over and traced the lines cut into Little’s forehead.

Raw meat heroes, Kilmartin called Little and his former cohorts. Still the fitness maniac, Minogue supposed, Little coached Garda teams, and his contorted face had appeared on the front pages of newspapers a few years ago.

GARDA OFFICER, 42, PLACES 4TH IN DUBLIN CITY MARATHON.

Kilmartin disdained and envied the reputation the Emergency Response Units had built. He’d put out rumors that Little’s training regimen involved booting trainees in T-shirts out of helicopters up in the Glen of Imaal and making them survive their two-day stay in the open by eating snails and bits of weeds. Some of Kilmartin’s inventions had turned out to be true.

Damian Little had had to do the sideways waltz into Communications after a disastrous ERU raid in a border village. Shot eight times, the suspect lived. He turned out to be a Special Branch officer. Trigger Little suffered no public rebuke, however. Minogue heard that he had become separated from his wife.

The cell phone chirping was his own. He opened it and listened to Larry Griffin, a site specialist, describe the progress of the site van in the thickening traffic outside the airport. He held his hand over the mouthpiece.

“Damian. Can I point the site van up here while we’re waiting?”

The drone was moving again. This time it emerged from behind the armored lorry. A screen filled with its jarring progress as it swung about and advanced by a line of cars. The radio came to life. Minogue asked again.

Little picked up a headset.

“Bring ’em up alongside, sure,” he said.

Minogue’s stomach rumbled again. He dropped the phone in his jacket pocket.

“Ah bollocks,” said Little. “Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks…”

Minogue looked over at the still picture on the monitor. The voice on the radio sounded bashful. Problems with a key were enumerated. Little swore. The picture shook again. The drone was reversing. Little put down the headset.

“Bollocks,” he said “Here we are with a ton of the best detection and control stuff in the world. The sniffer reads fine. The controls are dead on. But we can’t put a frigging key in a frigging lock.”

“Like you’re Einstein,” said Malone, “but you arrive home pissed.”

A bag of crisps even, thought Minogue. He scribbled the cell phone number on a pad and waved it at Little.

“Cut the shagging panel and be done with it,” Little muttered. “Jases. We’ll be here all night.”

“Derek Mur…” said Minogue. “The airport security lad?”

“Mitchell,” said Little. “APF, they’re called. Airport Police and Fire. Joeys, we call them. But they don’t much like that. Especially being as they’re going ahead with putting in a station proper here soon enough.”

“Where’ll I find this Mitchell fella?”

“Staff canteen at the near end of the terminal.”

It took Minogue and Malone twenty minutes to corral cups of tea, a bag each of cheese and onion crisps, and a quick account by Derek Mitchell of how he had turned up the missing car. Fogarty, the supervisor, had been too talkative for Minogue not to notice. Fogarty was worried about being caught on the hop. So he should. Mitchell might be new on the job but maybe he’d turn out to be the only fella patrolling with his eyes open too.

Minogue sipped his tea, took in Mitchell’s modest qualifiers. Mitchell had heard nothing of car thefts or break-in gangs working the airport. Five times — and Minogue had put a small tick in his notebook each time, so he knew: “I’m only new here like.” Minogue stared at his notes and tried more combinations for APF: Airport Police and Fire; Always Planned Fiascos.