John Brady - All souls

“You’re the wild woman now to drag me up here. It’s like cold water thrown in your face.”

“Had to be done,” she said. Her eyes had lost the fear and they glistened now. “You were turned in on yourself too long, man.”

“We must come here again when it’s as mad, so.”

Kilmartin was back with a clutch of drinks in his hands. He stooped in over the table and placed the glasses down firmly. For a moment, Minogue thought of tagged exhibits being positioned on the table under the bench.

“I had to walk on a few head-cases to get to the bloody bar,” he shouted into Minogue’s ear.

Pilgrim, exile, tourist, son,

Leaving here I thought I’d won,

Next time I’m back, I’ll bring a sign

Hey, while I’m here, this town is mine!

Voices roared throughout the pub. Still Minogue heard Joey Mad spit out the words.

Oh, Dublin town’s a desperate town,

But I’m a desperate man!

“Jesus,” Kilmartin broke in between Kathleen and Minogue. “People buy that, you know!”

More whoops erupted and the fiddle returned to race with the guitar.

“They pay good money to hear this clown tell ’em something like that!” Kilmartin’s mockery stopped abruptly.

“Christ,” he said, too softly for Minogue to hear, but the Inspector turned his head in the direction Kilmartin was looking. John Tynan, Commissioner of Gardai, raised a glass of amber-coloured liquid in wry salute. Kathleen had noticed too. She leaned into her husband.

“Are you in trouble? Are we in trouble, I mean?”

Minogue shrugged. He picked up his drink and headed into the crowd. Kilmartin followed. Blocked for several moments by two women executing an impromptu two-step to the repeated chorus, Minogue turned to his colleague.

“How come he’s here?”

“Well, he phoned earlier in the day. Asked if you were around or if I’d be in touch with you. I happened to mention that you-well, Kathleen, I mean-had invited us up to this madhouse for a jar. Social, like.”

Minogue probed for sincerity in Kilmartin’s eyes before making his way toward the Garda Commissioner.

Tynan stepped out the front door of the pub and into the yard. Minogue and Kilmartin ambled with him toward the wall that flanked the Barnacullia road below.

“Lovely,” said Tynan.

“Before your man inside started his shouting and screeching,” said Kilmartin.

“The view, I was thinking,” said Tynan.

The Commissioner leaned his elbows on the wall and looked out to the lights mapping the coastline of Dublin. North of the city, a plane’s winking lights floated down to meet the waiting airport lights. Behind them came the muffled rumble of the pub. The door opened and blew music out into the night, stealing it back as it slammed shut.

“A lot of our tax-free artists, musicians and the like, live up around here,” Tynan observed.

Minogue guessed that Tynan had attended parties in such houses.

“Social Welfare,” Minogue murmured. “Sort of grows on you.”

A trill sounded from somewhere on Tynan’s upper body.

“Excuse me,” he said, and he pulled out a telephone from inside his coat. He fingered a switch and turned away. Kilmartin elbowed Minogue and winked. Minogue felt like punching his colleague hard in the shoulder.

“Give me a half an hour, then,” Tynan said. The door of the pub opened again.

… a desperate town,

…and I’m a…

Tynan dropped the phone down the inside of his coat.

“Apparently I’m late for something. So says Rachel.”

Why come up here then, Minogue thought. Tynan’s clairvoyance startled the Inspector.

“I heard you’d be doing some of your recuperating up here tonight,” he said. “So I decided to drop by.”

Kilmartin took a drink from his glass, shuffled and looked out over the lights.

“Well. How is it with you?”

“Everything takes time.”

“You got off to a false start there in the County Hospital in Ennis,” Tynan said.

Minogue had been waiting for Kilmartin’s gibe about his mad rush to get out of County Clare but it had yet to be uttered.

“I didn’t realise the shape I was really in,” Minogue said. “It was almost like a dream, I remember thinking.”

“A bad business,” said Tynan. “But you did right.”

Minogue wanted to contest this. He had already detected in Tynan’s gaze that the Commissioner knew something about him from talking to others. Minogue had spoken but once to the Commissioner, when Tynan had phoned him at home.

“Well, now. Did Jim pass on the word to you?”

Kilmartin was now swaying slightly from the knees. He did not look away from the lights below.

“No.”

“The Squad stays as is,” said Tynan. “That’s what I decided.”

The Commissioner turned to Kilmartin with an eyebrow up.

“After all, I’m top dog. What I say goes.”

Minogue noticed that Kilmartin had stopped swaying. Tynan sipped at his whiskey and turned back to Minogue.

“Had a call from Ennis,” Tynan resumed. “Superintendent Russell.”

He took another sip and his gaze stayed fixed, like Kilmartin’s, on the lights.

“Says hello to you, by the way.”

“Very nice of him, I’m sure,” said Minogue.

“Yes. Tom says you should get in touch with him the next time you’re coming down to Clare on business.”

“I was on me holidays,” Minogue said.

Tynan seemed to ignore Minogue’s qualification. “Before you leave Dublin, he was at pains to note. ”

“I believe I know what you mean.”

“What Tom Russell meant,” Tynan corrected, “was this. Are you going down on another trip in the near future, maybe?”

Minogue thought of the County Hospital, of Mick and Maura and Eoin in visiting. Mick had smuggled in a half-bottle of whiskey. Maura had slipped as she had kissed her brother-in-law and landed on him. They’re talking about the farm at last, she had whispered in his ear. She phoned Kathleen a week later with the news that Eoin had persuaded his father to apply for money to drain the four boggy fields, the Kilshanny quarter as the family knew them. They’d had an agricultural adviser in walking the fields with them. They’d visited the bank.

Minogue thought of Crossan walking from the bed to the window, back to the bed, while he talked about Jamesy Bourke’s funeral, the guns found in a field behind the Howards’ house, the arrests around Clare. Back in Dublin, Minogue had spent a day mooching around the Art Gallery, hiding in Bewleys. He had admitted to no one how shaky he was. Dan Howard’s face, looking empty and older and lined in places Minogue couldn’t remember noticing from before, had been on the front page of The Irish Times two days in a row.

The Inspector had found the box of photos in the wardrobe. He had taken the photos out of the box and kept them in his pocket. He hoped that if he tried harder or sneaked up suddenly on the snapshots, he would spot some semblance of the smiling man from his sleep in the grainy pictures of Eamonn. When he got home that evening, Kathleen told him that Crossan had phoned again. The lawyer wanted to know if Minogue would be coming down for Sheila Howard’s funeral. Minogue went first to the cabinet under the sink, then to the front room where he had thought about Crossan’s question for almost an hour.

“I think not.”

Tynan nodded.

“There’s an article in the Independent,” said Tynan. “Very catchy title too. Credit to a journalist by the name of Hynes, co-written with another one. Do you know Hynes, Jim?”

“He’s been a boil on me arse for an undue number of years,” said Kilmartin with little malice.

“Must have a good source,” said Tynan. “Sharp info. He speaks well of your Squad. Very well indeed.”