Islandbridge (37 page)

Two of the men stepped in next to the wag, and began arguing. The wag seemed happy enough with how things were going now. Something in the vacant smile and the folded arms told Minogue that this fella was more than the designated clown of the group. He'd gotten his way. Maybe he was a soldier on leave?

He stepped around the wag and told the others to shut up. He made a quick sweep of his card.

“Calm down the lot of you!”

To which he was told, almost in harmony, by at least two of them: you tell him to calm down.

“Wait for your mate over there,” Minogue tried. “We'll talk to him.”

One of the men, he couldn't tell which, invited him to talk to his arse. Minogue glanced down at the keypad as he dialed, and he tried to ignore the voices that had risen around him again. The wag was getting straight about his rights and discrimination, bloody
roy-cizm
. Racism? Irish people against English? Wasn't it the other way around?

Minogue thumbed Send, and he eyed the gathering lines of watchers again while he waited for a connection. Still no uniforms. He looked over his shoulder toward the Merchant's Arch that framed the Ha'penny Bridge over the Liffey behind. Nothing: nothing except some girls, an old man and a man in a leather jacket. His eye lingered a moment on the man, and saw him shift something he was carrying as he descended the steps toward the quays. A white helmet?

“Tommy,” he called out over the others, and pointed at the figure now bobbing down the first few steps.

Malone took a step to his side and then, with one more hesitant step while he craned his neck, he broke into a sprint. The men all shouted at once and turned to watch him. The figure in the arch turned at the noise and for a moment watched Malone running his way.

“What the hell's wrong with that copper?”

It was the wag, and he seemed almost disappointed.

Bloody lunatic, Minogue heard from another, and then effin' head case. He closed the phone and started out after Malone, but one of the foursome stepped into his path.

“Bad idea, Nigel,” he said. “Get out of the way!”

“What the hell's this? Are you real cops? Candid bloody Camera, right?”

Minogue reached out, but the man danced aside and again blocked his way. Enough, Minogue decided: this one at least was going to get the treatment, in spades.

“You're under arrest for–”

He stopped as he saw Malone careen to a stop and slam his back against the wall.

“What,” he heard the taunt, but ignored the sneering face on the man in a half-crouch waltzing around ahead of him. “You want to do something, do you? Come on.”

Something happened on the wall above Malone – dust – and Minogue heard a crack high up behind him. He turned to look and saw a spot in the hand-painted sign for the pub.

The man with the helmet had come back up the steps. He'd stopped a couple of steps from the top, and was pointing in Malone's direction. Malone crouched and half rose again, his head bobbing and weaving like a boxer.

Someone in the small crowd called out the word “shooting,” and several broke away. Minogue shouted out Malone's name again.

The four yobs had scattered, but beside him the wag had scuttled over in one crablike move.

“Someone's bloody shooting!”

There was boozy breath in the air around him.

“I know shooting, so I do!”

Minogue saw a small flash now from the end of the man's arm. Shouting started behind, and Minogue heard shoes scratching for a grip, footsteps running.

“I didn't mean no 'arm,” said the man beside him, blinking hard. “It was just a bit of a laugh, wasn't it?”

Malone was backing away now, his hands guiding him along the wall. The man with the helmet turned, but then came around again for what looked like another shot.

“My grandmother was Irish,” the man said. “I didn't mean no 'arm, right?”

The man lifted his helmet and pushed it over his head in one movement, and then skipped down the steps. Malone ran backwards in a crouch, his hands touching the laneway. The bobbing helmet had disappeared over the edge of the top step now.

Minogue pushed Redial, and waved Malone over.

There was a look on Malone's face that Minogue hadn't seen before. Malone's eyes darted from the archway back to Minogue as he spoke into the phone. Minogue reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Malone's tongue seemed to go like a snake's, side to side, so fast over his lips.

“No 'arm, mate,” the wag kept repeating to Malone now. “No 'arm?”

“I think he has a motorbike parked down on the quays,” Minogue said. He repeated the location, spelled his name, said yes, it was Inspector.

“And he'll be long gone down the same quays in no time, on a motorbike.”

He gave his mobile number again. He was told to leave the connection open.

Malone's face was white. Minogue saw that his hands were shaking.

Malone seemed to want to say something. The Englishman's beery breath was all around them now. He was reaching out to try to shake Malone's hands. Over the talk and the odd shout Minogue heard a siren.

He knows what he's about, he thought. He'd be through traffic like a flash and he could go anywhere with a motorbike. He left his hand on Malone's shoulder, watched the darting eyes and wondered if Malone might vomit or something.

“Look,” he heard several people in the crowd say. Suddenly there was a siren close by.

In a few moments he saw the flashing blue from a second squad car on the walls, and he pressed his mobile to his ear harder. He wondered, but didn't care, if Malone might erupt on this half-drunken iijit now trying to shake his hand.

“I been under fire mate, I know what it's like, okay? Irish Guards, you know? The Queen Mum's boys? No 'arm, okay? Really. I'm Garry, mate. Okay? No 'arm?”

Malone let his hand be shaken, but kept his eye on the Arch. Minogue was finally driven to turn on the drunken yob turned maudlin conciliator, Mr. Nigel Englishman.

“Will you just give over there?”

Minogue wasn't much pleased to be taken seriously at last.

“Just go,” he said to the outstretched hand, and watched as the man made off sideways, still trying to keep up eye contact while he kept mouthing something that could have been remorse.

The sets of running footsteps were winded detectives with their guns drawn. Over the siren Minogue still heard muffled yells, even yelps, from people nearby. In moments, a fainter siren joined the first. It remained out of sync, but grew stronger as it was funnelled up to them through the arch from the quays. Two older women were making their way up the steps there now. He heard Malone take a deep breath and exhale.

“That was close enough, Tommy.”

Malone nodded but didn't take his eyes off the two women who had now stopped.

“Why is crap like this always happening to me,” he whispered, hoarsely.

Slowly, Minogue stood upright. The crowd, began to reform, and seemed to be getting bigger fast. Mouths were dropping open, and Minogue guessed by some expressions on others' faces that they were skeptical. Blue light from the roof lights pulsed on the metal and glass of the shops opposite; an engine was racing in high gear, tires shrieking.

He waved one of the detectives over. Someone spoke to him from the Emergency switch, a different man's voice. He asked if there were personnel at the scene now. It took Minogue a moment to figure out what personnel meant again. He'd been thinking of how shock might take hold of Malone, of what ‘no 'arm' that gobshite had been going on about.

Two more Guards appeared, running up the steps from the quays, and Minogue watched the women almost fall to the wall. The bastard is long gone, he decided.

The voice on the phone asked again if the Guards had arrived.

“They have,” Minogue said.

Could he hang up now but continue to make the line free? He could, he told him. He stepped over to Malone. The first detective over had two orange-red spots high on his cheeks from his exertions running here. Minogue wanted to tell him to put the gun away.

“George?” the detective repeated. “That's the name?”

Some uniforms had arrived now. Minogue's chest felt achy and full of something swollen, and chill. This was the time your brain catches up a bit with what happened, he knew. Malone too seemed suddenly exhausted, and he stood now with his head down, answering the detective in small nods and shrugs. Once he turned his head, bruise toward the detective, and shook his head to a question.

“A motorbike,” the detective next to Minogue muttered. “He'll cover plenty of ground on that.”

Minogue let his eye contact last a few moments. The detective got the hint. He had to rip the Velcro back twice after settling the pistol, to place it snuggly in the shoulder pouch. The detective said something to another, who turned away and spoke into a walkie talkie.

“Let's go over to the car,” he said to Minogue. “You and your mate. Malone, is it? Get some details?”

Minogue ignored, as did Malone, the four men now turning their way as they passed. Again he heard the “no 'arm mate.” Malone snapped his head up and turned and took a quick step toward them. The uniformed Guard brought up his notebook to stop Malone. Minogue didn't hear what Malone said between his gritted teeth, but at least two of the words started with an F.

Chapter 21

September 11, 1993

R
YNN'S BUSINESS
, Victory Meat Packers, was nothing to do with meat processing, Maura Kilmartin found out. It wasn't a nothing, it was a shell, a tax hole probably. She'd asked Róisín to see if there was anyone she knew in the Revenue Commissioners who could do a little digging for her. Róisín said she'd look into it. By the way she said it, Maura believed she would prefer not to, and she was glad she hadn't mentioned who she'd wanted to find out about. It didn't come up again.

When she phoned the number for Rynn, a woman answered. Was this Victory Meats? Who wanted to know, was the answer. Maura asked if this was the right number for a Mister Rynn. In the few seconds' delay before the woman answered, Maura heard a hand rubbing over the mouthpiece at the far end, and the woman shouting out “Da.”

“He says, who are you?”

“An employment agency, Mr. Rynn contacted us.”

She heard a man's voice in the background, and then a cough.

“He'll be with you in a minute,” the woman said, and held her hand over the mouthpiece again.

Her own need to take a breath made Maura gasp. How long had she been holding her breath, and not even noticed? She tried to breathe steadily, slowly.

She looked at the bank statement again, and remembered the tone in the meeting with the branch manager, the one about the loan to re-do the offices she had rented. It was the nerve of him, just assuming he could talk to her like that, more than anything else. He accepted that it was a good location, but wondered if she was not a little over-optimistic in her business plan. The banks never changed. It had been bad luck that Jim had asked her casually whatever had happened to that house out in Foxrock anyway, and she had ended up shouting at him.

He had been shaken by her outburst. He'd muttered something about not being “nobs” or “Foxrock types,” or “keeping up with the Joneses” before withdrawing. Later, conciliatory and tender as he was in bed, he tried to ease things. If she could win the lottery, ha ha, or if she could get money out of the agency. But everything in the agency still got ploughed back– She jumped when the voice came on.

“Yes? Are you that agency crowd?”

“Mr. Rynn, you were looking for people to work for your company, and we kept you waiting a bit by mistake. General labourers, was it?”

“That's right.”

“How many openings?”

“I'm only starting up, amn't I? And if I can't get me workers, how can I get started?”

“Did you say four or five, was it?”

“That'd be a start.”

“A start?”

“What's this, question time? I don't know exactly. I can't predict exactly how many. You don't know the business, do you? Obviously. All I know right now is there's no-one wants to work at that that's born here. That's why I'm talking to you. Right?”

“But you could save yourself money, if it's only four or five people. You could find them yourself, maybe?”

“Says who? There's nobody wants to do it. And them foreign ones are good workers, aren't they?”

“Seasonal work, is it?”

“Yeah. That's a good way to look at it. Look: say a friend of mine, say he gets an order of beef for some place – Saudi Arabia or something. I'm not joking, that's what's going on now, did you know that? Did you?”

She said that she didn't.

“Well, that's not going to last forever, is it? So he doesn't know how many months, or how many people exactly. I'm just trying to help a mate out here. He's fierce busy, you know? Things is really taking off. He says he'll have to build a new place and all. Right?”

“Well, I'm not sure we're the right people here.”

“What are you talking about, ‘not sure'? There's people telling me they already have to go outside the country to get people. I mean, I'm hearing there's places like yours, they'll get people in from Yugoslavia and that, if that's what the factories want.”

“We don't do much of that, and it's only skilled trades really.”

“Well, don't you think you should? I'm telling you. It's going to be big here, like it is already on the continent. Nobody's full-time hiring anymore. You pick up the phone, a fella says ‘how many?' And out they come, to your factory or your greenhouses or whatever – in a van, they're for the day, or the week, whatever – and they're gone. No problem, right? Building sites even, the foreman is short so he only wants lads for a couple of days, mixing cement, brickie's helpers and that.”