Islandbridge (22 page)

“Tell me what you want to tell me,” Minogue said then. “And it better be good.”

“Okay,” Malone said. “I'm going to start by asking you a question. How many times have you been down the Naas Road? The N7, like? On your way down the country, like.”

“Is this a
Gobán Saor
story, Tommy?”

“What's a Gubawn Sare? Is it a curse word?”

Minogue shook his head. He eyed the Chinese beer again, but decided against it. He brooded a few moments on the loss of the stories of Gobán Saor, literally the journeyman mason. Long a relic of primary schoolteachers in the country in a different age, the stories of the Gobán Saor had no chance these years, really. They would never show up in
Riverdance
, and that was a fact. What use could anyone here have for those instructive yarns of wit, wisdom, and correct behaviour from a Gaelic Ireland? That Ireland midwifed by spittle-flecked schoolmasters pressing their frightened students into the service of the Great Ireland Nation had disappeared for decades now.

“How many times?” Malone asked again.

“A million times. I don't count. Why do you want to know?”

“Did you ever stop in one of the places there, you know, the pubs or eating houses? All them new places sprouting up out there . . . ?”

“Never. Wait – one of the kids had a bad stomach years ago and we were stopping every ten miles or so. I forgot. Some pub. The Red Cow maybe.”

“Seen the place recently?”

“Well yes. But I don't be stopping in. It's only a few miles out of Dublin.”

“So then you don't know the likes of what goes on there, do you?”

“Not much, happily. But I hear the stories.”

“The knocking shops, and all that?”

Minogue watched Malone pouring the last of the beer.

“All the truckers and the salesmen . . . ? The chancers and the skangers? The dealers and the fences and the tinkers and the thieves? Have I left out anyone?”

Sonia appeared from the kitchen and laid a tray on a table where two young couples sat. She did not look over toward Malone. Minogue wondered how many hours a week she logged in, between helping here, and her studies, and her bookkeeping work.

“I don't know, Tommy,” he said. “That's not my end of the patch, that stuff.”

“A lot goes on out there, I can tell you.”

Minogue watched the couple launch into a bowl of something, with chopsticks. Then he turned to Malone.

“Do I get to say something now?” he asked him.

Malone took another swallow of beer.

“Only if you like,” Malone replied.

“All right so,” he said then. “You're going off your patch here with this. Have you noticed?”

Malone's eyelids slid down a little.

“How do you mean?”

“Aren't you coming in sideways on someone else's case, without telling them?”

“The Condon thing? When I have something, I'll put it out for them. I didn't expect this stuff at all, remember I was telling you and Kilmartin the other day? I only went to Lawless on another thing, a heroin ring, the ones getting in stuff off boats down in Waterford and Cork, and that. I wasn't expecting him to spin out any stuff about Condon, or Guards on the take, or that. I go where the information leads.”

“The fact is, you should be talking to the ones doing the Condon investigation.”

“I will, I will. Just as soon as I check out this tip tonight. Won't take long – but the minute you leave Dublin, well anything's liable to happen.”

“What are you on about, ‘leave Dublin'?”

“There's someone I want to talk to, and I have to drive a bit out of town to do it.”

“Who?”

“Condon's girl,” said Malone, in a voice little above a murmur.

“You found her?”

“Not exactly. But maybe someone who'd know where she is.”

“What's the name?”

“I don't actually have a name, a proper name. It changes, I think.”

“No name? Changing name? Is she visible, or maybe invisible?”

“If I knew I'd tell you, wouldn't I?”

“Tommy, think about this, will you. Think about what I'm thinking about, when I hear you talk like this.”

“It's the best I can do,” said Malone. “I heard ‘Marina' but the illegals here move names around, and go under different names. She's a foreigner though, for sure. Not much English, I was told – and she's from someplace the far side of all them other places. Way over in there, you know what I'm saying?”

Minogue shook his head. But Malone eyes rested on someplace on the wall of the restaurant where a portrait of a dragon hung.

“Moldova,” said Malone. “Yeah, that's it. Thank God I didn't mind Geography. Moldova.”

“Moldova,” said Minogue. He noticed Malone's eyes were not focused at all.

“Yeah,” said Malone. “But I'm not actually
going
to Moldova, am I.”

“Where are you thinking of going, then?”

“Oh, me and me take-out are going out into the car now in a minute, and we're going off down the Naas Road.”

“What's there?”

“The story I got is that she's maybe part of that scene. The after-dark scene or the ‘late lunch' crowd. You know?”

Malone's order was ready. Minogue watched Mr. Chang's appraising eye linger on Malone, and then return to taking down an order on the phone. Was it Kilmartin who had told him that more of the hotel rooms along the Naas Road were actually booked during the day than in the evenings?

“So?” Malone asked him.

Minogue couldn't persuade himself that he hadn't seen it coming. It did not stop his irritation turning to anger, however. He glared up at Malone, but he knew immediately that the game had moved on.

“Just get me back to me car there in good time so's I can go home at a decent hour,” Minogue said.

Malone shrugged, pulled at his nose, and pushed his Fiat into fifth. There was just one more junction before they'd get a clear run at the Naas Road.

Minogue made sure the power was off on the mobile. The smell of the Chinese food had made him hungry now.

The traffic coming into Dublin gathered in slow sullen herds at the traffic lights. Minogue eyed the aluminum plate that Malone had been forking noodles from while they talked. Malone made a face and swallowed slowly.

“Sonia's oul lad must have put frigging rat poison in that noodle thing.”

Minogue spotted the building coming at them in the distance.

“Is this where we're meeting this fella,” Minogue asked. “Paddy Bang Bang?”

“Not this gaff coming up, no,” Malone replied. “We're going to the next one, The Roadhouse.”

“Look,” he said after a few moments. “Just call him Paddy, or Mr. Finnegan, will you? The Bang Bang's what got him into trouble in the first place. Okay?”

Minogue said nothing, but turned instead to look at the full car park as they passed a place called Highway 66. There was a separate place for the transports and buses the far side of the sign. The sign was enormous, a composite of American highway signs, cowboy hats, and lariats next to some kind of an older-style American car.

“Yeah,” Malone went on. “Paddy had a short fuse. This was back in primary school even. He used to get slagged something fierce, I'm telling you. No ‘special education' them days. So one day, Paddy had enough. Scrawny fella he was then but wiry, like a monkey. Anyway. Out of nowhere, he came at one of the worst of them, a fella in fifth class, fancied himself I suppose. Up jumps Paddy, gives him one in the snot. Bang, he put him away.”

“‘Bang?'”

“A puck in the snot. Not a gun. God, what are you thinking there, a gun in primary school, in Crumlin?”

“Maybe I was thinking of secondary.”

“Paddy quietened down a good bit when he moved school. They found out he couldn't read. Dy-dy– no, it's not diarrhea. It's where you can't read.”

Minogue nodded, but didn't supply the word.

“So someone called him Paddy Bang Bang and that was it?”

“God, no. That was only a while ago that happened. You see, Paddy was never one of the crowd. For one thing he always liked farming and the woods and that. Growing up in Crumlin, yeah, I know what you're thinking. But he had people out in Kildare. That was the saving of him really. Funny thing was, he got into the fishin' and shootin' you know, the rod and gun crowd. Of all things.”

“With a temper like that?”

“Ah, now. He did great – compared to what could've happened. He's very handy, great carpenter. Didn't he fall for this girl over visiting from, are you ready for it – Brazil. Where they make the nuts, right?”

“I never knew that.”

“It's true. In the heel of the reel she came here to live and they have a place, a few acres not far off here. Still goes out with a gun but only on contract. There's a ton of deer now, I swear to God, and there's farmers are paying him to take a few. Paddy goes out lamping. It's a bit pathetic, he says. The deer, they just look into the torch and he shoots them. Then he eats them. Honest to God. He even uses the fur.”

“The hide.”

“That's right. He waits in a place he knows they're likely to be. All night sometimes. He's happy enough, he says, sitting in a ditch, in the rain. Snow, even. Does a lot of thinking on the job, he says.”

“Then shooting.”

“Not so much. ‘It might sound cruel,' says he, ‘the lamping. But it's not. They just freeze, so you get to shoot right.'”

“Hence the bang bang.”

“No. And will you stop interrupting me? That was remarks passed about his missus. You know the kind of music they do like over in them places, Brazil and that? It's very, you know, cha-cha and all that. Dance stuff, right? So there were jokes going around, you know, the hot-blooded people and the topless beach thing in Rio. The ‘bang bang' thing. So of course that sort of attaches itself to his missus. Slagging, like? They were jealous of him, the locals. I mean, I hear she's gorgeous. So Paddy hears about it, one particular fella, and he, well, he . . .”

“Shoots him?”

“Christ, no. He loosened his joints for him one night. I think there was some dentistry involved, orthodontic things. Is that the right word? Teeth. Whatever. So that's how I got back in touch with him. It was his ma actually, she phoned my ma. Could I help out, etc.? So I did – only after I found out if he was on the level. He was. The other fella was a go-boy. He had paper on him, in actual fact. So I had a word with this fella's ma, who had a word with him. And so forth. You know what I'm saying.”

“Dropped the charges?”

“Yep. I told Paddy it was only right he footed the bill for your man's orthodintec– dentistry, whatever. So, it's a favour back. I know it's a long shot, but I was thinking, where would this girl of Condon't be likely to be, if she, well, you know. If she hadn't been . . . You know?”

Two cars came up quickly behind and flew by. The second, a black Porsche, Minogue registered, was chasing a silvery Lexus.

Minogue turned to watch the lights appear through the hedges and the trees only to be swallowed up again. Small farms here in this horsey part of Kildare had suddenly been selling for a few million euros. There were sheiks with helicopters, film stars, talk of the Rolling Stones.

“Here we are,” said Malone.

He took the Fiat too fast into the bend as they left the motorway.

Minogue hadn't really seen this place at night for a long time. Even a few years ago, when it was still Shannon's, The Roadhouse had been a big barn of a place, complete with floodlights and flags and planters and metal lawn furniture of the friendly Ireland. But now there was a big restaurant out the front, with tons of plate glass and an outdoor sheltered trattoria. He spotted several of those propane heaters that were capped with shiny saucers glowing amidst the candlelit tables and Singapore-style umbrellas. Ireland,
al fresco
.

“Was that always there?” he asked Malone, craning his neck to see how high the beam of light went.

“The
Star Trek
thing, that searchlight? This year. But Dublin Airport is getting them to shut it down, I hear. Plus, it's attracting too many aliens.”

“How would anyone know that, in Kildare?”

Malone began trolling the car park for a spot.

“Tommy.”

“Go ahead.”

“Say you do find this woman, this ex of Emmett Condon's.”

“Yeah.”

“That'd be something the team working on Condon couldn't do in all this time.”

“I know, I know. Didn't I just tell you it was a long shot?”

“Okay, but what would you do with that information?”

“Listen,” said Malone, “before I even think of giving you an answer to that. Do you think they wanted to find her? Do you think they even believe, or they even care, whether she exists or not?”