Islandbridge (17 page)

Arrayed around the walls were the expected Stations of the Cross, and then the lines of pews in the dim light, interrupted by the forms of those sitting or kneeling. A figure would stand, another kneel, another would enter the church, part of a constant eddy of people.

Malone had stopped. He turned to Kilmartin, and nodded at a pew.

“So,” said Malone. “Can you wait over there?”

The candlelights glittered in Kilmartin's eyes.

“I remember Lawless now,” he said. “He killed a man over a car.”

Minogue saw a figure move behind the glow from the candles, a face turn his way, rapidly blinking eyes.

“Can you?” Malone repeated.

“Look, that's a monk,” said Kilmartin. “I mean a friar.”

“Right,” said Malone. “He's part two of the deal here. You and the priest fella. So can you–”

“He's a Franciscan, right?”

“No, I think he's from Dublin,” said Malone.

Minogue remembered the friar now: Coughlin, Father Larry Coughlin. He'd been on
Morning Ireland
last week. A former stockbroker in London, Coughlin now did the social work thing with addicts, as well as say Mass.

Kilmartin stepped closer to Malone. The move reminded Minogue of the exchange before the first round of a boxing match.

“Listen,” said Kilmartin. “Me no likee. This could be a setup. There could be cameras and I don't know what. I don't like this one bit.”

Malone looked at Minogue.

“Jim, just a short while?” Minogue tried. “Okay?”

Kilmartin stared at the face behind the candles. His eyebrow came up, and then something close to a sneer took over his face. He broke his gaze abruptly, and muttered something about meds, and slipped into a pew.

Minogue mouthed an elaborate thank you that Kilmartin pretended to ignore, and then he followed Malone. They sat into the pew in front of Father Coughlin and Lawless. Father Coughlin grasped the long rope that hung by his side, the name of which Minogue had once been proud to know and had now forgotten, and a rosary beads he'd had somewhere, and also a bit of his robes. He got up without a word, or even a glance toward the two policemen, and knelt to Lawless's right.

“A con,” said Kilmartin, and looked at his watch again. “Pure and simple. You got a twenty-minute lesson in bullshit. And I hate to say it, but . . .”

He and Minogue rounded the corner into South Anne Street. Malone had gone his own way after a phone call had interrupted their few words outside the door of the church.

“Let me guess,” said Minogue. “‘Tommy Malone is a desperate gobshite to go along with any of this.'”

“You too – don't forget yourself.”

“Nothing personal, right?”

“Exactly.”

“For encouraging him?”

“Something like that,” Kilmartin agreed. “Malone needs to be reminded, but . . .”

Minogue kept working around the flow of people at the corner of Grafton Street.

“Well, at least it was interesting,” he said.

“Really? But am I ever going to hear the details that the little bollocks told you two?”

“I told you everything, Jim. Lawless was repeating himself after a while. He had some talk about a Guard playing for the other team, that it's been going on a good while.”

“Yes, but who? And where, and how, and when, for the love of God?”

Minogue shrugged. Was it Russian he could hear from a couple holding a street guide by the corner? His own ignorance came to him again: Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, why not even Polish? Ahh – he'd never keep up with this.

“He said he didn't know.”

“But that this Guard feeds some of the gangs in Dublin, right?”

“According to Lawless. That's the rumour he heard from his brother in jail.”

“But how did the Condon thing come up?”

“He didn't actually use Condon's name,” Minogue replied. “He said that part of what his brother had told him was that some Guard, some undercover Guard, had been nosing around in this too, but then he turned up dead himself. An overdose – ‘that cop they found ODed' were his words, as I recall.”

Kilmartin shook his head.

“No doubt he wants a thousand million euros for this.”

“He didn't say what he wanted.”

“Disneyworld might buy it, tell Malone. Has Malone actually bought any of this line from that little bollocks?”

“I don't know,” said Minogue. “But I got coffee and cake out of it. And I got bailed out of the PowerPoint thing too.”

“Malone gets an idea into his head, bejases, and he'll sink his teeth into it like a badger, Matt. Obsessed, I call that. Don't you see?”

Minogue made a non-committal nod, and stepped up the pace. All he wanted was to be here amongst the crowds, hearing the languages, and eyeing the looming trees of St. Stephen's Green waiting for him at the top of the street.

“They tried to play Malone before,” said Kilmartin. “It's the old story, isn't it? Before, they used his brother to get at him – Terry, God rest him. And now? Malone is working GNDU here, in the thick of it? The Garda National Drugs Unit . . . no wonder someone would be trying to fiddle with his head. Even just to cause trouble with his crowd, Matt. He'll always be a target for that, Malone. But he should have a bit of cop-on, for God's sake.”

“Sowing the seeds of discord, is it.”

“Disinformation is what it is,” said Kilmartin. “Do you know what that is?”

“Of course I do. I'm a married man the same as yourself.”

“You're not as funny as you think you are there, you
bostún
. Surely to God even you crowd in, ahem, International Liaison there, know there's enough of the Dublin gangbangers went big here this last while. Come on now: brazen, bigger, and bolder. Sure, they think they're running the show.”

Minogue nodded.

“Remember the Egans there a while back?” Kilmartin went on, as though Minogue were still an unbeliever. “Who else is there in it? The Rynns, what's left of them? Jumbo Rynn is still in it, I hear. He's an oul lad now, he can hardly walk. Emphymesa, or something.”

“‘Nothing too trivial, I hope.'”

“That's not like you,” said Kilmartin. “Hard talk like that.”

“That was Wilde.”

“Wild, is right. It just sounds odd coming from you, you oul softie.”

“Ah, things are moving too fast lately,” Kilmartin went on. “Waaay too fast, I'm telling you. There's fellas in town here getting into the driver's seat for gang stuff, now, fellas who have about ten words of English. Me refugee, get money, wanna drugs I get for you, friend in Moscow, let's do deals, no wanna go back there, likee here too much, lotsa stupid people I rob and cheat.”

“Is that how they speak, refugees?”

“‘Refugees?' Don't get holy on me, Matt. And don't be so damned naïve.”

Minogue stopped by the lights, and waited. He knew that he would try to screen out what Kilmartin's remarks revealed, but it still soured him. He thought of Father Coughlin, the Franciscan sitting in the church. He had left a millionaire job in London to help drug addicts in his hometown here?

“Someone's messing with his head,” Kilmartin said, over the traffic. “Mark my words, Matt. I'd be thinking Malone's losing his, what'll I call it, maybe not his
marbles
yet, but his perspective, you could call it.”

“But not in a bad way,” said Minogue.

“Don't be cheeky. You know what, Matt? I wouldn't put it past that bastard Lawless to hatch up a scheme to get at me – either of them. For locking up one of them. You see?”

There was a knot of people gawking into a window up ahead, and others were drifting over to catch a glimpse of whatever it was. It was another hi-fi shop, Minogue saw. There was live coverage of the event in Malahide still. The man he had seen earlier was onscreen, and he appeared to be in tears. McCourt, McCoy – no: McCann, that was his name.

“What gives here,” Kilmartin said. “What am I missing?”

“I saw it earlier on. A stowaway fell out of a plane over in Malahide, apparently.”

Kilmartin lingered, squinting into the window.

“A stowaway?” he said.

Someone in the small crowd turned and nodded, and said something else to Kilmartin. Minogue took a few steps to show Kilmartin he wasn't for hanging around any longer. Kilmartin exchanged a few more words with the man, stared for a while at the screen, and followed Minogue.

“Dropped in unannounced,” he said to Minogue, who gave him a quick glare, and began walking faster. It took some effort from Kilmartin to catch up.

“What's your hurry?” he demanded.

“I'm trying to keep up with the coming times. Unlike some.”

They had to wait a minute for botched traffic signals at the other end of the Green before they could cross and start up Harcourt Street.

“Here, I never asked you,” said Kilmartin, beginning to breathe heavier from the pace. “Who are you working with now?”

“Same as before. International Liaison.”

Kilmartin was like an old woman more and more, Minogue had decided. Maybe it was since the move out of the Squad that his friend had become even more of a gossip and a collector, and a cynic. But there was no-one Kilmartin didn't have a yarn about, or couldn't dig up one with a few phone calls.

“But who's your minder there, day-to-day, I mean? Your ‘mentor'?”

“Tadhg Sullivan.”

“Aha! I know Tadhg. Tadhg is Kerry – no prize there, with the name, I know. Fenit, is he from?”

“Worse,” said Minogue. “I actually suspect he might be from Dingle.”

The sun came out then, without warning. It blasted over this small part of Minogue's city, lighting up the trees and the glass. He looked up, in hope. There'd be a bit more of it, he believed, maybe even enough for him to get the last of it this evening down at Killiney Strand.

“Listen, what are you doing later on?” Kilmartin said.

“After I've concocted some excuse for getting out of the meeting?”

“This evening, I mean.”

“Herself might have plans, maybe. Maybe I'll study for me French exams.”

“You blackguard, you'll do no such thing. Next thing you'll try is ‘herself wants the rockery rearranged.' Christ man, that rockery of yours – you must have moved it ten times.”

Minogue took in the passing cars and the pedestrians as he strode along. He didn't care if this was a bit taxing for Kilmartin. He began to imagine a camera on him, someone taking notes: “
Collusion with others to leave their post. . . . Heart not in his
work. . . . Appears skeptical of value of Euro-conference and
intelligence-sharing, especially if presented onscreen . . .
.”

He looked over at Kilmartin, who was huffing a little now, and trying not to show it. He had gone a bit stout lately. Maybe it went with his bilious comments about foreigners that Minogue wished he hadn't heard earlier. He slowed a little.

“Look,” said Kilmartin. “Will you come by the house tonight?”

“To your house?”

“Not
to
the house,” said Kilmartin. “No: I have to get
out
of the damned house. It's that frigging kitchen thing of Maura's. Without a by-your-leave, she has the kip turned upside down. There's fellas working there until eight and nine at night! ‘Can't get them any other way,' says she.”

“What had you in mind?”

“I mean a bit of gallivanting. You go round and about some nights, don't you? A healthy stroll, and all that. Come on now. Keeps you fit, right?”

“I don't do it for that, Jim.”

“Well, whatever,” said Kilmartin with a touch of annoyance. “Up them lanes and hills and whatever. Let me try it out.”

The irritation rose up suddenly in Minogue.

“You have plenty next door to your place, Jim. Killiney Hill there, Dalkey?”

When Kilmartin said nothing, Minogue stole a glance over.

“Fair enough,” said Kilmartin then.

Chapter 5

M
INOGUE HAD PICKED UP
a copy of the summary from the session with Moser.

“So, was he good?” Tadhg Sullivan asked.

Minogue looked over at his colleague. Sullivan, a Kerryman, with all the Kerryman's propensities, would probably have heard about the truancy already.

“The Austrian fella's thing? Moser?”

Sullivan nodded.

“It was great,” Minogue replied.

“Just great? Not brilliant, or anything?”

Minogue gave him a wary scrutiny to see any sign Sullivan was winding him up.

“He is very up on everything, Tadhg.”

Sullivan flicked the pages, pausing to study some of the maps.

Minogue's thoughts began to drift back to the church, and again to Lawless's glittering eyes reflecting the candle flames, as they blinked and darted about the church. So Garda Emmett Condon had died of an overdose. Wasn't that fairly common knowledge by now? This girl that Lawless had said Condon had been been mixed up with, this foreign one that nobody knew about, well Minogue could check when he had time if there was any mention of this in the case. Or not.