Islandbridge (34 page)

The road was already taking on more of a lived-in look, after just two years. It would be so easy to just stay. She was house proud, with all her flowers and shrubs, and she was not afraid to admit it. For all his talk about dirty Dublin, her new husband would fit in here just grand. So what if anyone wondered at her remarrying only a couple of years after Declan.

He was old-fashioned, and it was good enough for her. For all his big talk, he was a softie. He had that protective attitude, wanting to look after her. It was sweet, and sincere. He was dependable. Yes, a Guard, but he was very ambitious. It was only an odd time she wondered if he'd become like these other ones, the ones who'd talked to her about Declan. Would he ever lose that boyish sweetness, the longer he'd be in the job, or the higher he'd rise up the ranks of the Gardai?

She recalled the Guards who had talked to her about Declan, their vague, condescending answers and their looks that said damaged goods, all the while coming up with their hypocritical words of sympathy. Surely in some part of them, one of them even, they'd know that Declan's last tortured months had been down to them as much as that bastard Rynn. They couldn't have protected him from Rynn and his people. They probably would have pushed Declan back in, to play him to Rynn so they could use him too.

The fact was, they'd looked at her as an accomplice: it was as simple and as brutal as that. They didn't believe her, any more than they'd have believed Declan. And Declan had known that too, all too well: that's why he was backed into a corner. The last straw had to have been the humming and hawing when the issue of the widow's pension came up. She was certain right from the start that they weren't above using it as leverage. When she'd finally gotten it settled – and then only through some influence and pleading through a local councillor friend of her mother's – she had been as much as told that from then on, the best she could expect from them was to be forgotten about.

Liam was restless. His cheeks were rosy still, but she couldn't be sure it wasn't from lying on her shoulder. She tried to look at his gums again, but this time he wouldn't have any of it. She didn't push it. She'd humour him a bit longer.

She walked from room to room upstairs, listened to him saying things. Then he grew quiet again, and held her shoulder, reaching out sometimes to touch the mobile that circled over the bed. She stood by the window awhile. Theresa had two big shrubs in. Digging away, like a farmer. The back gardens were dotted with sheds now, and vegetable patches. There were swings and balls and bikes all over. Soon the trees and bushes would hide the walls. Here, on this road, with a good number of couples their age, was the future she and Liam had planned. Maybe assumed, was the better word.

The woman from the estate agent had told her she'd get what she paid but the market was flat. If she did a proper paint job – not just the original stuff – and showed up the kitchen more, it'd sell quicker anyway.

She looked across the rooftops in the direction of the city, and she wondered what it'd be like when she was full-time at the new job. What would it be like in the mornings, having to leave the baby at a minders, would he cry his eyes out? Would she, and would she be worrying all day? And would they let her go early some days, or give her time, if Liam got sick?

Maybe she should wait. But they were expecting her, her mother said. It was her mother had contacted a man from home who knew the owner, and it was the owner alone, Michael, who had interviewed her. The typing and filing was all she'd expected, just like in the civil service. Michael said he'd hoped she'd try more, when she was ready. A nice enough man, but the phrase told her that he'd give her a start based on sympathy and pull from her family, that he wasn't expecting much.

At least her mother and father had moved more her way, she recognized. They'd realized she wouldn't be swayed by their appeals to move home or at least out of Dublin, where this awful thing had happened. Well, she wasn't going to just get up and move. She'd show them what she was able to do, all of them. Mitchell Personnel, her own family too. Most of all, she'd show those Guards at the meetings she'd had to go to, with their dull eyes and their sparing, barren words.

Chapter 18

P
ECKISH NOW, AND FRUSTRATED
by this clumsy, half-arsed, door-to-door effort they were doing, Minogue was still managing to bite back his complaints. He followed Malone into a place called the Orient Express. He sort of remembered Iseult saying it was good, but dear.

The woman adding up something on a pad of paper looked like someone famous, but he couldn't remember who. A very skinny waiter was walking between the tables, fixing napkins or something. Minogue saw from his backward reading of the sign pasted to the window that it had only just opened for the day.

He kept his card ready but let Malone do the talking. The woman had a country accent that she hadn't troubled much to tame for the cosmopolitan Dubliners she now fed and profited from. Handsomely too, Minogue was certain, and he turned the last page of the menu to see if the wine, even, wasn't priced as extraterrestrially as the food. It was worse than he had expected. He closed it.

“We do go through an employment agency,” she said.

The “do go” counted for a lot with Clareman-in-exile Minogue. This was all the more so, he knew, because his recall of the English Lagerlout Touring Team episode was still circling in his mind.

“It's hard to get people,” she said. “For the jobs in the back especially.”

“Marina, we believe,” said Malone. The woman seemed to consider it, but then shook her head.

She might have been seen with a fella,” Minogue said then. “A great big lad. Foreign accent but has the English no bother.”

She made a vague smile and looked up and out the window into the now greying afternoon sky over Dublin and then shook her head.

“There's a wojous lot of foreign accents now,” she said.

“Wojus . . . ?” asked Malone.

“A hell of a lot,” said Minogue. “That is to say. An expression from God's country.”

Who had she now working in the kitchen, Malone asked. She laughed.

“My sister's two young ones, up from Bandon. It's only for a month and then I'll have to find someone. Go to an agency, I suppose. But that's the way things are nowadays.”

Minogue waited for Malone to try his last-chancers. It went on more than he expected when Malone got sidetracked into talking about woks. He watched the passersby, and cast an eye up. That light was deceptive, he was beginning to think. There could well be rain before the day was out.

He was ready to jack it in now. They should work out a way to get proper manpower from Tynan to canvass the place properly, not this hit and miss.

He left a card on the glass beside her pad, and thanked her. Iseult, he thought of then, a future treat here?

“When's your busy time here?”

“We open at five. It's go go go from about the half-five mark, I'd have to say. Until eleven, sometimes midnight.”

That was just when night-owl artist and dangerous welder Iseult Minogue, almost a single mother now, would be getting started.

A teenager passed the windows, and the light caught the glint of a chain around his neck.

“This man that might be with her sometimes,” Minogue said. “He likes his rings and things. Not that hip-hop hobo going by now, but a chain. Big lad.”

“Yeah,” said Malone. “Like Tom Jones, but without the wrinkles.”

She made to smile and stopped. She looked out again.

“You know now, there was a man . . .”

Minogue waited. She turned to catch his eye.

“A big man, but a black shirt – not a polo. Had a nice chain, I remember eyeing it and thinking I'd like one. Had big hairy arms, with a big watch. Rings too, yes.”

“An accent maybe?”

“Well now. I remember he laughed.”

“Who was he with?”

She frowned and shook her head slowly.

“This is a while back,” she said.

“A long while, was it?”

He saw her draw a breath before replying.

“I don't remember. Sorry.”

The tight, business smile she offered now said goodbye, and be quick about it, thank you very much.

“Maybe someone else on your staff might?”

“Hardly,” she said.

“But you remember something . . .”

“Look, I'll tell you something,” she said. “I don't do scratch-your-back for anyone, even the Guards.”

“Do you mean, especially Guards?” Minogue asked.

She started gathering menus. Minogue waited.

“It concerns a matter relating to people being mistreated,” Minogue said. “Particularly girls, women, we think, from over that way.”

She was about to say something but decided not to.

“We're real Guards,” said Malone, “we're not iijits, you know.”

“Are you not, now. What happened with your face, do you mind me asking?”

“He had a contretemps with an alien, we think,” said Minogue. “He's one of the people we're looking for.”

“An alien.”

“That's their official name here. Russian, Turkish – we don't know.”

She looked toward Malone again.

“Here's what I'll do. I'll keep your number here and maybe I can phone you if this man comes by here.”

Minogue gave her a few moments.

“This whole place has come a long way, hasn't it,” he said. She looked up from the card. Minogue was sure she was holding back something now.

“Not just this lovely place, the food and all,” he went on. “Not even the whole Temple Bar thing – not even Dublin, actually.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I meant how a citizen can say that to a Guard, she might help. If it suits her.”

Her eyes lost any warmth.

“We do criminal investigations, did you know that? Real policemen, yes.”

“Are you trying to insinuate something?”

“Know what Moldova is?”

“It's a place, I think.”

“You're right. It's a country that doesn't have much of anything like we have here now. It has lots of misery though, and crime, and girls who are desperate and gullible and vulnerable and probably not half as educated as to the wider world now as we are.”

Again she looked over at Malone.

“He does this every now and then,” said Malone. “Gets fired up, like. Thing is he means it.”

“So we have aliens amongst us,” said Minogue. “Do you know where this is going?”

Her face changed.

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “Come here. Only you – leave Scarface over there. You're senior, I take it?”

Minogue followed her to the back of the restaurant. She sat and placed her hands flat on the tablecloth there.

“You don't know the half of what goes on here.”

“What, in your restaurant? Tell me, so.”

She stared at him.

“Okay,” Minogue said after a count of five. “Okay. I'll back off.”

She spoke in a low voice, her eyes on the door.

“After I tell you, I want you to do something. Ready?”

Minogue nodded.

“I want you to keep this to yourself, what I tell you. More than that, I want you and your mate to leave.”

“Tell me why.”

“I have a business to run. I can't control who my customers are. I just make great meals, offer the best service I can, and I can't think about the rest of it.”

“Taxes . . . ? I hope you're not one of them–”

“–Don't even think about it. I do everything by the book. Check it out. I'm a model for it.”

“Are you paying to keep your windows in?”

A look crossed her face.

“I mean protection money,” he said.

Three women came in and she waved at them.

“I've got to go. You do too.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“Listen. This is what I want you to know. Do you know names in Dublin, like the other side from you?”

“Criminals?”

“Yes. You know the Rynns?”

“Heard of them, yes.”

“Good. He came in here one night a while back with another man. It was a man like you're describing.”

Minogue squinted at her.

“He's old, and he didn't touch much of what the other one ordered. The big one, he knew his food here. He had an accent. He wasn't showy or loud or anything.”

“When?”

“I don't remember, I told you.”

“More than a month? Less than a month?”

She shook her head.

“A month then, say,” she said and she stood. “You need to go now.”

Minogue watched and marvelled and later tried in vain to describe to Malone as they walked slowly down the lane, how her face changed into the perfect maître d' – or was it madame d'? – as she went to the table where the three women had chosen.

“Rynn,” said Malone. “The old maestro himself. He's a right, rotten, conniving old bastard. A long, long time, he's been on the job. I could never figure that out about him, you know? Bulletproof, or something. Walking the streets still.”

They stopped outside another restaurant. Minogue held up his hand against the glass to see in. The place was half full already.

“But Rynn's ancient,” Malone said. “And I don't see him eating goat or whatever she has on the menu.”

It was decision time, Minogue knew: jack it in for the day, and go home, or . . . Malone was reading minds.

“Come on,” he said to Minogue. “I'll buy you a burger and we'll come back here in an hour. There'll be more staff in, the busy time . . . ?”

“A burger.”

“What's wrong with a burger?”

“Have you ever actually eaten at one of these places, Tommy?”

Malone shook his head.