John Brady - All souls

Minogue made another quick study of the man’s face. The eyes were lazy and red from the drink, the pocked skin still oily. Thomas Martin Nolan, known to his few mates and the man he had killed three hours earlier as Jelly Nolan, seemed sober. Nolan’s eyes were fixed on a ventilation grate high up on the wall where grey lines of dust, years’ worth, edged the metal. He drew on his cigarette. Nolan was twenty-two but he looked five years older. His red hair was cropped close, and the ends of his thin moustache curled into the corners of his mouth. His body was already thickening from too much drink and stodgy food. Nolan fingered the studs in his ear before he squashed his cigarette into the saucer with his left hand. Then he examined his hands carefully, pausing to stare at the nicotine-stained fingernails. Although Minogue had all he needed from the earlier session twenty minutes ago when Hoey and he had done the interview, the Inspector decided that he might as well get as much as he could from Nolan before Legal Aid showed up.

Nolan cleared his throat. “Any more fags?”

Minogue shook his head. Hoey had left the room five minutes ago. “Well, fuck you and the horse you robbed to get to Dublin on, you culchie bastard.”

Minogue was suddenly seized by an urge to reach across the table and hammer Nolan in the face. He grasped the table-top and searched Nolan’s face again. Jelly Nolan had kicked a man to death outside a pub in Drimnagh. Nolan had known the victim, John McArdle, all his life. McArdle had worked as a deliveryman for a Dublin newspaper. He had loaned Nolan twenty quid a week ago and last night in the pub he had asked for it back. When Nolan wasn’t forthcoming, McArdle had taunted him. Nolan had gone drinking elsewhere but had returned at closing-time and followed McArdle down a lane. There he had felled McArdle from behind and kicked him in the head until McArdle lay dead in a puddle of cranial blood fed from his ears and nose. McArdle hadn’t known that Nolan was in a corner already, running from a local shark to whom he was in hock fifteen hundred quid. Caught knocking off food, Nolan had also been sacked from his job stocking supermarket shelves. He had run out of friends, run out of a future. Minogue had heard of the shark, Carty, before. Cash Carty and his brother, Shocko, collected debts with legendary brutality.

Nolan glared back under his eyebrows at the Inspector.

“What’s the big bleeding staring match about? Here I am doing your job for you. All I want is a few fags. You got everything you want there, haven’t you? I signed your bleeding statement. I didn’t give yous any run-around. So what’s the big deal?”

He was sure he could take Nolan handily. He was also afraid he’d not stop with the first blow. Nolan frowned and leaned back in the chair. His white boiler suit reminded Minogue of a patient awaiting surgery. Detective Garda Shea Hoey opened the door of the interview room. He looked at Minogue, raised his eyebrows and broke the Inspector’s stare fixed on Nolan. Minogue lurched out into the corridor. Hoey introduced a sleepy-eyed woman in jeans and a leather jacket as Kate Marrinan from Legal Aid. She spoke tonelessly to Minogue.

“Has he made a statement?”

“Yep,” replied Minogue. “Got the caution in front of a witness, signed the waiver.”

Not much older than Iseult, he guessed. Kate Marrinan had short fair hair with a touch of red. She looked at her watch, yawned and swung a shoulder bag around front. Minogue’s anger had ebbed. He wanted real coffee, a chance to chat to Kate Marrinan about her work. Both hopes were long shots and he knew it.

“He’s all yours. Mr Jelly Nolan. I think he’s relieved to be in custody. Almost looking forward to being put away.”

She wrote “Jelly Nolan” on a notepad.

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself, Inspector?” She hadn’t taken her eyes from the notepad.

“I’ve been accused of worse,” he tried. “But I think people cod me with comments like that because of my easygoing disposition.”

Kate Marrinan squinted at him. She remembered him now.

“Huh. I heard different. Who’s codding who here?” Minogue almost smiled. There were pleasant dangers to being known as a character in Dublin.

“We have seen to the rights of the accused in every respect,” he began. “He was quite keen to tell us about what he did up that laneway and how he did it-”

“ If he did it, you mean.”

“Twelve o’clock today, his clothes and shoes will come out of the lab with evidence tags on them,” Hoey weighed in. “Open and shut.”

“Signed in at one o’clock,” Minogue murmured. “He’ll go to the Bridewell and get remanded over first thing in the morning.”

What sounded like a sigh to Minogue escaped from Kate Marrinan. She hugged her shoulder bag and laid her hand on the door handle.

“Where’s the fags?” Nolan called out. “And a bit of tea or something so as I can keep me bleeding eyes open.”

The door opened.

“Who’s she?” the detectives heard Nolan ask.

“I’m your legal counsel,” Kate Marrinan said. “And I don’t smoke.”

Hoey and Minogue huddled in the doorway and watched the fine rain glow around the streetlights. Through the hush of rain, Minogue heard trains being shunted at Heuston Station at this western end of Dublin’s quays. Hoey spoke through a yawn.

“I know what you’re saying.”

“Nearly let him have it, all right,” Minogue murmured again. “I must be losing it or something.”

“It wouldn’t have done him any harm.”

The rain was steady and gentle, as though it were being sprinkled methodically. Drains gurgled in the middle distance; a gutter drummed tinnily next to the door. Hoey took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He turned from Minogue and a folded airmail envelope fell to the pavement. Minogue picked it up and nudged Hoey’s upper arm. The detective turned back in a cloud of smoke.

“Fell out of your pocket.”

Hoey hesitated before taking it. He coughed once and plucked it from the Inspector’s hand. “The latest epistle. St. Aine to the pagans.” Minogue registered the ironic tone but said nothing. “Says the people are very nice,” Hoey went on. “The Zimbabweans. Did I say that right?”

Minogue wondered if Hoey kept all his girlfriend’s letters in his pockets. “Sounds right. Here, I’ll be in sometime in the morning proper. See if I can sleep this off. Maybe I’ll wake up and find out it was just a bloody dream or something.”

Hoey flicked a glowing butt out onto the street. It hissed and was carried as it landed. The two detectives watched as it was propelled along, spinning, by a lazy runnel of water. Trapped for several seconds on a drain-grate, the butt bobbed before it was snapped abruptly into the darkness below.

Minogue tried to stay clear of the bottle of Jamesons whiskey which he knew was kept beneath the kitchen sink. Kathleen Minogue had had new cabinetry installed that spring but the cupboard under the sink remained her detention area for whiskey. Her husband read its proximity to cleaning agents as her subconscious rebuke.

He was too restless to go to bed. He thought about tea-coffee would wake him up too much-and then he thought about a man being kicked to death in a laneway awash with rain. Kate Marrinan would doubtless try for manslaughter, that was her job: no hard feelings. My client is also a victim, a victim of hopelessness, of alcohol, of inadequate education; he is prey to vicious social evils endemic to working-class areas — drug abuse, loansharking; he is a young man of inadequate personality…