John Brady - All souls

The tyres bit and skidded as the squad car came to a stop behind the van. Doors opened and he heard voices, a radio. Somebody said his name. He didn’t have to go back into that house, he was thinking. He walked haltingly toward the car.

“Yes,” he replied to a question. His voice sounded unfamiliar to him now. “Inside… There was shooting. I think they’re dead.”

He wanted to tell them to switch off the noise from the radio. He heard someone say his name on the radio, then repeat it. He knew the voice. The sky jigged and flickered and changed colour.

“She’s in there and I think maybe-” he began.

His knees pulled him down but it didn’t hurt. Hands stopped him falling further. They pulled him up from his knees and grabbed him under his arms.

“Look,” he heard someone say as the sky turned and closed over him. “Is he shot?”

I don’t believe it,” Kilmartin murmured. “It must be a joke.” He looked over at Minogue. “Did you ever hear anything so stupid in all your life?”

Minogue shook his head. He dabbed his fingers over his eye. The lump had gone down a little. The X-rays had showed nothing on his knee either. His chest hurt when he breathed in deep. The bruise on his shoulder ran half-way over his shoulder-blade. He felt stupid sitting in a hospital bed.

“What?” Hoey asked. He was leaning on the window-sill.

“It says that a man thinks about sex an average of six times every hour.”

“Who says?” Hoey said.

“A scientist in the States. Somebody’s after codding someone there, by God. Makes you wonder how many millions were wasted on that. God, six times every hour. That’s impossible if you’re doing a proper day’s work.”

“Probably only applies in built-up places like Dublin,” said Hoey.

Kilmartin folded the newspaper and looked over at the Inspector. Minogue had decided that no matter what the doctor said he would be walking out the door at three o’clock today.

“How could you hold down a job, though?” Kilmartin went on. “Every ten minutes…”

“See what you’ve missed,” said Hoey.

“I’m hitting the road in an hour,” Minogue said.

“How?”

“Shea has the get-away car waiting outside.”

Kilmartin glanced at Hoey. Minogue had stayed overnight in the County Hospital in Ennis. He had woken up as he was being moved from the squad car to a stretcher at the door of the hospital. Sedated, he had conked out until nine o’clock this morning. His first sight had been Kilmartin’s size-eleven brogues resting one over the other on his bed several feet from his own face. Minogue’s blinding headache had abated almost completely by lunch-time, but he had no appetite yet. He felt apprehensive, anxious to be on the move again. Several times he had caught Kilmartin and Hoey scrutinising him from a distance.

“Did you phone Kathleen yet?” Kilmartin asked.

“No. And I hope you didn’t either.”

The Chief Inspector raised a hand to mollify. “Course I didn’t. And are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

Crossan had asked the same question four times that Minogue had counted, a Dr Leddy three times, Hoey but twice.

“I’m better off out of here, that I know.”

“But what about everything here?” Kilmartin was unsure of how to rein in Minogue.

“The X-rays are fine. The bruises, well, I’ll have to live with them no matter where I am-”

“The other stuff from last night-”

“I’ll do it all from Dublin, Jimmy.”

Kilmartin frowned. He was not about to give in that easily “Leave Russell to hear from us in Dublin as to what happened here in his own diocese, is it?”

“Exactly.”

“But he’s been waiting for the go-ahead to interview you here. If you’re well enough to travel, you’re well enough to-”

“I told Shea what happened last night. He told you. I told you myself this morning. You told me that you told Russell.” Kilmartin was shaking his head before Minogue was through.

“Wait a minute. I don’t want to be harassing you and you laid up here, but there are a million details-”

“Look, Jimmy, they can be had from Dublin later on. I don’t want to talk about it any more right now.”

Again Kilmartin looked to Hoey as though expecting a signal. Hoey’s eyes went to the window.

“Promise me you’ll go straight to the hospital or a doctor up in Dublin then.”

“All right.”

Kilmartin folded his paper again and tapped the roll on the bed. Minogue had felt the airy calm of the sedative ebbing since mid-morning. He had declined more. Leddy, the doctor with Mr Pickwick glasses, had continued his tests after Minogue’s refusal. He had also given Minogue’s knee a flex more abrupt than the first tests this morning, the Inspector remembered. Minogue was half glad of the returning aches, the stiffness and the burning bands on his wrists. Kilmartin’s final appeal came softly.

“Look, you can’t be taking chances now. You know as well as I do about concussion and shock. Stay another night here, can’t you? It’s for free, man! What’s the big hurry back up to Dublin?”

Minogue didn’t have an answer. From the silence, Kilmartin suspected some success with his efforts.

“Come on. Jases. Let me phone Kathleen. She can hardly eat the head offa me, now.”

“Don’t depend on it…”

Minogue’s thoughts were gone now. He had a floating sensation just before the fear overwhelmed him. The cottage he had stumbled out of, the room full of death. He shuddered and held his breath. Kilmartin looked down at the clenched fists. Hoey stepped away from the window and Kilmartin waved his hand low at him. Hoey slipped out of the room. Minogue’s jaw had locked with the strain and his breath was coming fast. He saw Ciaran being thrown to the floor by the bullet, Deegan’s face as he fell. And they didn’t tell him last night but he knew, the way they said they didn’t know, she was dead.

“Where does it hurt?” he heard Kilmartin whisper.

He knew now that he wouldn’t make it today. Kilmartin called his name again. Like a lost soul himself, whirling, vagrant and steadily slipping away as the dawn leaked into the sky. She was dead. He saw the ferry nosing out into the estuary, the Clare shore in the distance and the drizzle turning to rain. He focussed on Kilmartin’s face. He saw the alarm there and he wanted to reassure him. He opened his mouth. The doctor had appeared. The smug look was gone off his face now. He grabbed Minogue’s wrist. A nurse he hadn’t seen before elbowed Kilmartin aside and pressed a stethoscope to his chest. Minogue thought of Sheila Howard pushing the gun into his chest last night: She thought he had been holding out on them.

“If I had known,” he began to say. Somebody else came into the room.

He woke up stunned with a headache the following day to find Kathleen’s tired eyes on him. He closed his eyes again. The dream was slipping away too fast. He tried to get back, to see the face. Why was he smiling? He looked more familiar now but Minogue knew that the man intended to go. Who the hell was he? A moustache, black hair, eyes that did the talking. Looked like… Iseult? Tell her that sometime, he thought. Then he knew.

He elbowed up and stared at Kathleen. Alarm spread across her face and she came up out of the chair. His eyes left hers and looked beyond her.

“Matt,” she called out. Her hands were on his shoulders. “Will I get the doctor?”

He wondered if she still had that snapshot of him when he’d had the moustache. Two years after they were married, he thought: twenty-eight? His eyes returned to study her face.

“Are you awake now, love?” she asked again. “Are you all right?”