The Going Rate (6 page)

“Bigger rogues than us to be chasing. What speed were you doing?”

“Seventy something,” Minogue said. “Eighty, maybe.”

He was already anticipating the route from the turn-off at Kilmacanogue, along the Roundwood Road that climbed up to Calary Bog.

It had been months since he had been up here. The houses would peter out within a half mile of the motorway, he recalled, and then more and more rock would surface in the scruffy, marginal fields. A mile or so in, the kingdom of brambles, ferns, and furze would take over. He half-remembered views of Glencree, with whitethorn hedges and the yellow, spring-flowering gorse leaning in over the road.

“Super-cops,” Kilmartin murmured.

The squad car had taken the ramp up the overpass toward the start of the Roundwood Road. It was long gone by the time Minogue drew up to the stop sign. Descending then toward the junction, he spotted an old man, ruddy-faced and gaunt, standing in the car park of the pub. Beside him was an old Land Rover. A Wicklow collie sat in the passenger seat, apparently following its master's lead in watching Minogue and Kilmartin. The old man's long face had something of a horse about it, Minogue decided, especially with the breezes tossing the tufts of snowy hair that swelled out from under his tweed hat.

Kilmartin had spotted him too.

“I don't care what anyone says,” he said. “There's a look to them.”

Political correctness was still alien to Kilmartin, but Minogue had to admit that his friend was probably right. This was borderland after all, the edge of the Pale in former times, raider's country. Rachel Tynan's family name had been Weekes, a name with a distinctly Cromwellian sound to it, to Minogue's ear.

He had often forgotten that the Tynans' mixed marriage meant something to other people, especially because Tynan had spent a few years as a Jesuit seminarian. He had once heard a whispered superstition concerning why their marriage had remained childless.

“They're very organized,” said Kilmartin. “That's all I'm saying. I mean there he is, making sure that iijits like us find their way up to this church.”

The turn off the motorway seemed to have awoken Kilmartin.

“She planned it all, I heard,” he said, warming to his topic. “Mrs. Tynan, I'm talking about. Rachel, I should call her now, I suppose. She planned this place here, the event even.”

Recent years had drawn her back, Minogue had heard, and especially as her illness advanced, here to where she had spent her childhood. Those visits had resulted in a series of paintings of the bog with a grandeur of space and skies that Minogue had believed that no-one but himself had marvelled at.

He felt the tires bite loose gravel by the verge of the road.

“‘A celebration,'” Kilmartin went on. “None of this, what's the word? None of this… lugubrious stuff. A lot to admire in that, I must say. Yourself?”

As earnest as Kilmartin seemed, his words were unconvincing to Minogue. It was long an open secret that funerals still put Irish people in quiet good humour.

Minogue said, “Couldn't agree with you more.”

“Why's that? – Oh I see now. You're getting your Irish ready for the mass above. What am I saying, ‘mass.' Christ. The ceremony, I mean. The service – the celebration. Whatever.”

Minogue had half-forgotten that the service was to be in Irish. There would be paintings, he had learned, hers and her students,' displayed in the small church. Music was to be a big part of the event also.

The rain had come through here not so long ago. Wet ditches and half-dried roadway now ushered Minogue and Kilmartin up the narrowing road toward Calary, the Peugeot jiggling as it followed the shape of the road, leaning and swaying to its rises and dips – its very camber even, altered as it was yearly by the boggy soil beneath. Minogue struggled to detect which of the puddles might be potholes. It was no use. At least there was no oncoming traffic.

They were almost by a quarry when the bend abruptly revealed cars stopped in the road ahead. Minogue didn't like the faint squeak from the brake pedal.

There were people out on the road.

“Oh Christ crippled on a crooked crutch,” Kilmartin said with little feeling. “And His Blessed Mother of course. Is that who I think it is, standing on the ditch there? ‘Ill Be Hooves'?”

“Could be him, all right.”

“It is,” Kilmartin added. “And what's-his-face there. The sidekick. On a mobile, Delahunty. That hoor. Pinky and Perky, the pair of them. Christ.”

Minogue recognized Deputy Commissioner Eoin Burke, sleek in a well-cut navy-blue coat. It was Burke's MBA-style talk and his fondness for press conferences, more than the suspect touch of dandyism, that had drawn the name on himself. A testy exchange on Meet the Press, a current affairs free-for-all that encouraged what were called stakeholders to vent about anything, had been the occasion of Burke's folly.

Unwisely, Burke had thought himself equal to all comers, but under pressure early, he lapsed into chiding a rabid whinger, a self-styled citizen's rights maniac who was widely hated by rank-and-file Guards, the very people on whose behalf Burke believed he was sallying forth: “It ill behooves Mr. X here to be criticizing hard-working Gardai who…” And that was enough.

Minogue recalled Delahunty from a seminar on something to do with Biometrics. Much like Burke, Superintendent Delahunty worked at being approachable. That only made things worse. Both men were being groomed for something new, however, something very high-tech.

There were a half-dozen cars, a lorry, people standing around. Minogue put down the windows. Engines had been turned off. The wind was uncertain here, but it seemed to be picking up. Radio traffic filtered through the hedges, along with a more subdued but steady racket from the bickering, warbling birds of County Wicklow.

He pulled on the handbrake. Tight, maybe too tight. He couldn't ignore the squeak from the chassis as the Peugeot tried to roll back against the brake.

“I'll see what the story is ahead,” he said to Kilmartin. “Are you coming?”

“I'm not,” Kilmartin replied. “I'm grand here. In your nice new French car.”

Minogue climbed out of the car, lit a cigarette, and began to stroll toward the other Guards. The first lungfuls of smoke invigorated him as much as made him dizzy.

There was a mocker's gleam in Burke's eyes. He shook Minogue's hands a bit too heartily.

“Matt. Never knew you smoked.”

“Eoin, how's things with you and yours.”

“Top form, and thanking you. Is that himself inside in the car with you?”

“None other.”

“The funeral, I take it? Or what are we calling it, the memorial service?”

“I'm not sure of the official title. To pay our respects.”

Burke squinted at the shiny windscreen of the Peugeot, mischief flickering around his mouth. Minogue half-remembered Kilmartin grumbling about Burke's self-promotion some years back: was it a wall-eyed bastard he had called him?

“You frisked Jim, I hope.”

Minogue prepared to give him the eye, and to verify if Burke's eyes did indeed merit Kilmartin's jibe, but a gust of wind took Burke's hair and drew it straight up. Minogue glanced up to the rioting comb-over instead. He hoped Kilmartin was watching.

“What do we have up the road?” he asked Burke.

“Crash,” said Burke. “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago. The ambulance came already. Hardly worth your while to find another road now. Not that there are any up here.”

Delahunty closed his phone and issued Minogue a nod.

“They'll give us the go-ahead in a minute,” he said. His modulated Cork accent couldn't quite shed that nasal uplift at the end, and robbed of its melody, it came across to Minogue as strained, and even querulous.

The wind was now prancing about in uncertain bursts, tugging and then releasing Minogue's coat. He looked at the drooping brambles that swayed and jerked over the roadway, and the new rushes bowing in the breeze.

He caught Burke glancing back at his new Peugeot.

“Wild enough, here,” said Burke, stifling a yawn. “Nice all the same,” Minogue said.

“I suppose,” said Burke, suspecting contrariness. “But if it's wild we want, we should go back to Dublin, hah?”

Minogue made no reply. He had long ago given up trying to find a subtle way to advertise that he, a countryman like most of his fellow Gardai, was not therefore a reflexive slagger of Ireland's capital city.

“Baker's dozen the other day,” said Delahunty. “Including that Mulhall fella.”

Minogue didn't like the light-heartedness in his tone.

“Canoodling with his mate's wife, I heard,” Delahunty added. “‘Lying low?'”

“How many's that for the week now?” Burke asked.

“Eight in the last ten days,” Delahunty said. “Spring cleaning is what they're saying. And a fine Hundred Thousand Welcomes to our friends from across the water.”

Quite the pair, Minogue thought. He drew on his cigarette, and realized he had no idea what Delahunty meant.

“Welcome to Ireland,” said Burke. “‘We have enough of our own bad guys and gougers thanks very much. So bang bang, and pip-pip. Home in a box.'”

Delahunty turned to Minogue with renewed interest.

“But sure you'd be the man of the hour on that,” he said. “Wouldn't you? Liaison keeping tabs on the flotsam and jetsam washing up here from wherever?”

“Hardly,” said Minogue. “I'm only a runner-in there. Learning the ropes.”

Neither man believed him, Minogue was sure. The subject was gone after a brief lull. It was Minogue's chance to disengage.

Burke had read his mind apparently. He demanded to know what Minogue thought of the big upset at the Munster Finals last year. Minogue mustered his own staged indignation.

“I'm always upset by Cork hurlers,” he declared. “Especially the one or two good ones they seem to be able to muster.”

“Oh the diehard Clare fan,” said Burke. “Go away with you, and the rest of the Clare crowd. Department of Lost Causes.”

Minogue managed to make his way back down the road, alternately eyeing the saturated mash of dirt and humus by the ditches, and the mountain slopes in the distance.

He elected to finish his cigarette standing by the passenger side of his Peugeot.

Kilmartin stepped out presently.

“Stretch me legs,” he said. “And just so's you know, I won't be hiding in a car from the likes of Burke. Ill Be Hooves himself. He'll have to find someone else's grave to dance on.”

“Sounds like you're setting yourself up to having a go at him.”

“I would if I wanted to,” said Kilmartin, mildly. “No better man, I tell you.”

Minogue was suddenly uneasy. Kilmartin might be unpredictable, already moved off into the territory where nothing much mattered any more, and where he had nothing to lose. He exchanged a glance with him.

“Look at you,” said Kilmartin, with a wry expression. “Expecting the worst.”

“Behave yourself,” Minogue said. “You Mayo bullock, you.”

Kilmartin looked through the dense thicket of hedge.

“I saw them eyeing me,” he said. “Those two feckers. What'd they say?”

“They asked to be remembered to you.”

“You lying whore's ghost. I could tell by Burke's face.”

Kilmartin buttoned his overcoat. Minogue noted how loosely it fit him.

“You should have the sense to give up the fags now,” said Kilmartin. “I'm going up here a bit and see what the commotion is.”

Minogue took a last, long drag of his cigarette while he watched Kilmartin's progress up the road. In time, he set out after him. He kept his distance following him nonetheless, all the while taking in the forward cant, that assertive flat-footed gait, and the weary swagger that still hinted at a man who had been limber and strong, and once purposeful.

Chapter 7

T
HEY LEFT
M
URPH
'
S CAR PARKED
at the side of the warehouse. Fanning made a quick survey of the half-dozen sagging and rusted transport trailers huddled on the broken asphalt alongside the building, slowly sinking in amongst the weeds. A smell of engine oil hung in the air, pierced every now and then by a brackish, industrial tang. He heard the hush of traffic on the bypass a half-mile away.

“Any more news on your friend,” Fanning said. “Mulhall?”

“News?” said Murph. “What do you mean news exactly?”

“Like, what happened?”

“He got offed, didn't he. That's the news.”

“I just thought you might have heard something since. Being as you're in a position to hear things.”

“Meaning?”

“Well he was a friend of yours, you said.”