John Brady: The good life

Minogue caught up with Malone.

“It’s you and me from here on, Tommy.”

“You mean it’s your turn to pick a row with me, is that it?”

Minogue stared at him.

“Sorry. It wasn’t you at all. It’s you-know-who.”

“James is from the County Mayo, remember. They were hard hit during the Famine.”

“So what’s his gig then, the Killer? Is he a shagging cannibal or something?”

“He wants you to prove yourself,” said Minogue. “Education by provocation.”

Malone frowned.

“Okay,” he said.

“Go home, can’t you,” said Minogue. “I’ll close up shop. It’ll take a few hours at least for the prints search. First thing in the morning we call a meeting to get everyone on board and go over what we have. Unless we get something coming up in between.”

The Inspector watched the Sub Aqua van inch down off the footpath above the bank. The driver raised a hand from the window as he drove off.

“We should have a preliminary with a cause of death by dinnertime. A bag or something might turn up in the daylight tomorrow. Might get a call come in from someone worried about her. We really need a name to get going in earnest here.”

It took Minogue a few moments to realize that there was no point looking for his jacket on the seat: he hadn’t brought one. Why bother with a jacket if it was going to be another day like yesterday? He remembered the feeling of being incomplete and the sense of freedom when he had backed out of the driveway. It was a quarter to nine. The heat wave hadn’t abated. He was dopey. That yellow, metallic tint in the sky he’d noted on his drive through Ranelagh was something he associated with the end of a hot summer’s day here in Dublin, not the morning. As he penetrated through to the city centre, it seemed to him that the streets and even the buildings had changed colours in a subtle way his eye registered but his brain couldn’t confirm. A cement lorry trapped him for several minutes by a building site. Dust in the air seemed to vibrate with the thumping of pneumatic drills. Through an opening in the hoardings he spied foundations of yet another office building. His back was wet when he stepped out of the Citroen in the carpark.

“Ah. Eilis. La brea brothollach.”

She spared him a smile for his recollection of the cliches beaten into generations of students by schoolteachers exacting essays in Irish.

“…ag scoilteagh no gcloc le teas,” she sighed. She retrieved her cigarette from the ashtray and reached for a file next to a snow-dome souvenir of Lourdes on the top shelf behind her.

“Your business by the canal last night. Mary Mullen. She has a record. Had, I meant to say.”

Minogue opened the file and slid out the photocopies, a summary from the CRO.

“May your shadow never grow less, Eilis.”

He looked at Mary Mullen’s face. Four years ago: Mary Frances Mullen, eighteen. Twenty-two and a half when she was killed. She hadn’t been at all pleased to have her picture taken. Kilmartin had guessed right. Three arrests in one year for soliciting. Either she had quit then or she had smartened up enough to avoid getting caught again. The first arrest listed her occupation as hairdresser at Casuals, South Great Georges Street. The second and third listed her as unemployed. On her third conviction, Mary Mullen had been committed to the women’s wing of Mountjoy prison. There she’d served two months of a three-month sentence. Minogue skipped through the file. Under Associates, he read “Egans?”. Mary Mullen had not been co-operative. No admission of pimp, friends, associates. An arresting Guard had annotated in pen: “v. defiant and uncooperative; bad language, etc.” What had he expected, Minogue wondered.

Tommy Malone appeared by his desk.

“Here we go, Tommy. Mary Mullen. Last known address was in Crumlin.”

“Never saw heat like it,” moaned Kilmartin from the doorway. “Saw an ad today for one of those air-conditioner jobs to fit the window. I’m putting me name in for one.”

The Chief Inspector’s leather soles scraped and squeaked their way closer. Minogue didn’t look up. He finished copying the address and reached for the telephone book.

“Mary Mullen,” said the Chief Inspector.

“Nothing new in from the scene?” Minogue murmured. “Bag?”

Kilmartin shook his head.

“And don’t hold your breath on that either. See who’s in that file? Egans.”

“Gangsters, racketeers and thugs limited,” said Minogue. “Or unlimited, I should say.”

“But that file’s static for over three years. I phoned Doyler in the whore squad. Left a message to look up any material they have to update us.”

Minogue looked up from the file.

“Did you ever get your hair done at a place called Casuals? The bit you have left, I mean.”

Kilmartin tugged at the end of his nose.

“Is this one of those knock-knock jokes or something?”

“A hairdresser’s.”

“Are you blind, man? Short back and sides since Adam was a boy. Yes, siree, as nature intended. Grass doesn’t grow on a busy street anyway, mister. Casuals, huh? Sounds like a front office for a bit of you-know-what. Phone-a-whore etcetera. Modern times, pal. Right there, Molly?”

Minogue glared at the Chief Inspector. Foe and accomplice both, Kilmartin could well turn out to be right in his guess. No Casuals in the current Dublin area telephone book. No Mullen in St. Lawrence O’Toole Villas in Crumlin either. Minogue clapped the phone book shut.

“Well?”

“Gone since the last book, or else there’s no phone in the house.”

“Phone Crumlin station. What’s his name is the nabob since the Christmas. Mick Fitzpatrick. Yep. Nice fella is Fitz. Temper though. Fitz and Starts we used to call him years ago. Oh, but don’t you call him that or he’ll rear up on you, Tell him I was asking for him.”

Minogue looked at the papers again. Irene Mullen, the mother.

“We’ll go out and have a quick look first ourselves,” he said. “It’s only ten minutes up the road.”

Kilmartin laid his jacket on a chair.

“Course you have Tonto here to translate for you.”

Minogue closed one eye and squinted at Kilmartin. The Chief Inspector beamed back. Minogue grabbed his notebook, rapped it once on the desk and headed for the car park.

Everything still seemed too bright and too slow. He could almost hear his eyelids closing and opening. He wasn’t hungry but he knew he should make the effort. He made his way around the bus queues along Abbey Street and slipped down the lane toward the back door of the pool hall. Thirty lousy quid for the leather jacket that O’Connell knew cost two hundred in the shops. Bastard. The look that told him he knew it was the lowest price he could throw at him without making him walk off. The camera was a surprise. He’d said forty and gotten thirty. He’d kept the Walkman but the batteries had run out.

It took him a count of seven before he could see anything beyond the lights over the pool tables. All he could make out were the figures moving, the smoke. James Tierney’s closely cropped head appeared in the glare over one table. He leaned in again to cue the shot.

“Howiya, Jammy, how’s it going, man?”

James Tierney dropped the cue with a sigh, closed his eyes and then regrouped to line up the cue again.

“Get lost, Leonardo,” he murmured.

The cue darted, the white knocked the red hard against the mat and into the corner pocket. By the time the red clicked amongst the other balls in the pocket, the white was still.

“Ace, Jammy! Brilliant, man! Fucking ace!”

Jammy Tierney stood up out of the light. Another man stepped forward. The balls on the table were mirrored in his glasses. Tierney stared at the table and chalked his tip.