All souls imm-4 Read online

  “I hear you.”

  By the clumps of sodden grass that covered the rubble, a figure stood still. The rain dribbled off the rim of his cap and the breezes tousled his beard and hair. The rain had saturated his coat completely now and he felt cold drops roll down along his spine. The noises had stopped. He took his fists away from his ears and opened his eyes. Just the ruin and wet grasses and bushes under a low sky with the rain steady over everything. The cold had begun to fasten about his chest. He had been standing there for almost half an hour. The dog had tired of exploring and now lay at his feet. Occasionally it would get up, shake itself and nudge at the man’s knees with its snout. He would soothe the dog with words and strokes before returning to stare at the remains of the cottage. The more he tried to imagine it, the harder it got. The frustration clawed at his heart again and he heard himself whispering aloud trying to concentrate. The rain seemed to be getting heavier. In the few months since his release, he had come here many times. He had seen the odd car slowing as it passed the ruin, the driver eying him, but he never returned their cautious nods of greeting. Once he had thought of calling out to them: Yes, it’s Jamesy Bourke, all right, back to set things right at last. You can tell the whole bloody world that too, damn you! He thought back to the fear which had seized him just two days ago when he had started throwing the pills into the fire. Each day now, he committed the day’s ration of seven pills to the fire. The first time he had done it, his hand had reached out reflexively to save the melting pills from the embers, as though that part of him knew better than what his mind had decided.

  But now the images that came to him had become clearer than ever. In spite of his fears, the pictures that sometimes exploded in his mind had not been the ones he had had back in the cell, the ones he remembered with a vague but overwhelming dread. Wonder drugs, they called them, but he had known all along they were used to keep you stupid too. For a moment he saw in the steady rain the face of the social worker who visited weekly in his shiny Volkswagen, faking cheer and sympathy on that pink, unlined face behind the glasses. He had come to hate that face too. It belonged to another one he had to surrender to if he was to keep alive his chance of getting his life back. You run a very grave risk-he heard the words again against the slowly waving bushes that still rooted by the ruin which was also the ruin of his life-a very great risk of relapse if you don’t maintain the treatment. Grave, relapse. Fuck him.

  All that remained were the stones and the slab which had made up the floor of the cottage. Sort of like a grave but no one tended it. Jane was buried out in Canada. Murty Maher, the farmer who had rented the place to Jane, had bulldozed the walls after the fire. Bad luck on the house no doubt, and Maher had kept away from the place ever since. His hands seemed to remember that night better than his brain. The skin burned nearly black from trying to pull down the door as it was burning, but he hadn’t felt it at the time. Drunk, of course, too drunk. Some things he remembered but they had never fitted together: the way the flames burst out the windows after exploding the glass, the roar of the fire, the thatched roof she had liked collapsing with a whoosh. The heat on his face, his own screams that ripped at his throat so that he thought he had swallowed part of the fire itself, a Guard’s face inches from his own, shouting at him while he dragged him away by the neck. The hospital, the jail, his dejection at the trial were clearer memories. He hadn’t been interested in living, he recalled.

  The wind blustered and flung rain into his face and he turned away. He looked at the shrubs and bushes that had run wild as they leaned with the wind. Stray leaves flew around him. His coat was heavy on him, pulling down his shoulders. He hadn’t slept last night and he still didn’t feel bad. Maybe he’d try to take a snooze when he got home and changed. A slap, like a hammer-strike on wood, was carried faintly on the wind to him. Thunder? The dog stood slowly, her ears pricked and her head rolling from side to side to hear better. She whined and looked to him. He called to her and began to make his way down to the road, stepping up over the mound of rubble which had been pushed out from the house to block the laneway against tinkers drawing their caravans in and settling. He stopped then and turned for a last look at what had been Jane Clark’s house. Here his own life had stopped too: like the floor dropping beneath him, he had tumbled into a nightmare which had lasted twelve years. And it still wasn’t over. He’d never met any of the Minogues. He had known them to see but, like the rest of them now, he knew they would be wary of him, pitying at best. Yet again the thought wormed into him that even Crossan had promised he’d get in touch with Minogue, the big-shot Guard in Dublin, just to get rid of him. He’d go to Crossan’s office in Ennis before the week was out, by God, and see what he had done. A. Crossan, Barrister-at-Law, he recalled on the plate by the door. Huh. Crossan had changed like the rest of them. He’d had twelve years to do it in, to get on with his life. The office and the secretary with her eyes like bloody saucers when he had walked in. Crossan no more than fucking Dan Howard didn’t want to be reminded of things that they’d written off as dead and buried years ago. But Crossan was all he had for now.

  The anger tingled in his arms before it burned his chest. The rainwater ran across the road in little rippling waves like the sea ebbing on the strand. The drugs would only keep him asleep. That was like letting part of himself stay dead. It was time to wake up. Better this way than hanging on, hanging around with half a life. He called out to the dog and his heart lightened when he saw the wagging tail, the willingness. There were prisons with bars, he thought as he set out for home, and there were other prisons too. His prison now was his own memory, but he had been locked out.

  Kilmartin was waiting for him. Minogue bowed to Eilis, the secretary of the Murder Squad, as he passed. She spared him a smile and a mock curtsy in return for his.

  “Your Worship,” she intoned in her native Irish.

  “Aha,” Kilmartin called out. “Hardy Canute himself. Howiya?”

  “I’m a bit shagged.”

  “Well, that’s life in the big city, pal.”

  Minogue glanced at the mass of his friend and colleague, Chief Inspector James Kilmartin. Eilis scratched a match alight next to him.

  “A real beaut,” said Kilmartin, thumbs behind his belt now.

  “Kathleen doesn’t think so,” Minogue baited. “Says it’s depressing.”

  “I didn’t mean the fecking weather. I meant last night. The job done above in Drimnagh. Signed, sealed and delivered.”

  “He had enough drink in him to get manslaughter, I’m thinking,” said Minogue. “So does Legal Aid. The way I heard her anyway. She’ll go wild when she hears he confessed. Expect a call, I’d say.”

  Kilmartin’s expression turned thoughtful.

  “God, you’re crooked today,” he murmured. “‘Her’?”

  “Kate Marrinan.”

  Kilmartin rolled his eyes. “Jesus. That one? A grenade disguised as a barrister. She gave me a few kicks in the balls when she was defending that fella what killed the fella with a hammer…Hogan. ‘Victim of society’ shite, right?”

  “She didn’t give me the treatment last night anyway.”

  “Wait till court, bucko. Jesus wept. She’s an expert on everything. Did you hit the sack at all?”

  “Enough of it. Is Shea in?”

  Kilmartin’s brow creased with the effort of holding back a comment. Minogue wondered if Kilmartin knew of Detective Garda Shea Hoey’s habits lately.

  “You know I’m off starting tomorrow. Get a break for a few days.”

  Kilmartin’s brow shot up. He nodded toward his office. As Minogue followed him, he saw a yawning Hoey slope in past Eilis’s desk.

  “Just give me a hand in drafting a press release to warn all the gutties and head-cases that they’re to wait until you come back from your holiday to-”

  “You’re a howl, Jimmy.”

  “Just a bit of levity, Matt. Don’t get your rag out over it. Course there’s no bother. Sure haven’t you overtime buil
t up like a bank?”

  “Good, so.”

  “Yes. Morale is everything.” The Chief Inspector nodded his head as he spoke now. “A bit of R and R to keep you sharp. It builds morale, let me tell you. You can throw your hat at the technical stuff if you haven’t the morale built up. Amn’t I right?”

  The phrase echoed in Minogue’s thoughts: Build the morale? Sounded like Kilmartin was trying out a phrase he had heard in his hob-nobs with senior Gardai. The new Garda Commissioner, John Tynan, had made Kilmartin and other senior Gardai jittery. Kilmartin knew that Tynan was planning a major reorganisation of the Gardai. The new Garda Commissioner’s back was not for slapping and Kilmartin, the tribal chief with his repertoire of bombast and charm, still struggled to find a purchase on the metropolitan modern, Tynan. Minogue bumped into Tynan more than chance allowed. Wary of him, he still liked the Commissioner’s dry wit, especially its effects on the likes of Jim Kilmartin.

  “But Jases, look outside, it’s bucketing. Are you going to hide at home and do a bit of wallpapering and painting or something?”

  “A visit to Clare for a day or two. Then I was half thinking of somewhere like… Santorini.”

  Kilmartin frowned but Minogue let him dangle for a few moments.

  “It’s in Greece.”

  “Well that’s very exciting, I’m sure.”

  “Wouldn’t mind a week there if we could get a cheap seat. Morale, don’t you know.” He frowned back at Kilmartin. “Build morale, like.”

  Kilmartin didn’t register receipt of the gibe.

  “Have you court?” he asked instead.

  “Ten days’ time,” Minogue answered. “State has no plan to call me up. Yet.”

  “All right so. But listen. There’s something I heard last night that I didn’t like one little bit. Not saying there’s a fly in the ointment as regards you and Kathleen having a fling off in wherever.”

  “Santorini. You have to ride on the back of an ass to get up from the ferry, I hear.”

  Kilmartin’s brow creased again.

  “Arra Jases you can do that below in Belmullet, man,” he scoffed, referring to his home town in Mayo. He narrowed his glance.

  “I bumped into Tom Boyle at a shindig. You know Tom, don’t you? Got a kick up the ladder the same time Tynan got the throne.”

  Minogue remembered a slim, dapper Chief Superintendent Boyle from a drinks party at Kilmartin’s new house in Killiney. Boyle now occupied Tynan’s former position of Assistant Garda Commissioner.

  “I know him not to run him over in the street, I suppose.”

  “Uh-huh. Well. Tom says that Tynan’s a week away from a final decision about ‘reorganisation.’ Says Tynan is a holy terror in committee. Won’t listen to reason. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I do and I don’t.”

  Kilmartin flashed a wily smile.

  “Come on now, Matty. Don’t lay the ace and you with the knave in your fist. You and Tynan are thick enough when you want to be.”

  Minogue’s thoughts had flown to the prospect of a large white coffee in Bewleys. A read of the paper, plenty of noise and chat. Sociable, solitary, solace-noisy Dublin’s best secret.

  “Well? Has he dropped any hint to you about folding up the Squad here?”

  Of course the travel posters would have been treated to highlight the blue of the Mediterranean, Minogue thought, throwing up the whitewashed walls to startle the eye. Turquoise…but the pictures couldn’t be all hammed. Fishing nets and boats bobbing in the harbour. He heard Kilmartin’s tones straying into the combat zone.

  “He doesn’t use me as a sounding board, Jim. It’s just social and how-do with him.”

  “That a fact?” Kilmartin asked with his eyebrows arched. “Well, Tom Boyle isn’t one for idle chat, let me tell you. No flies on Tom, by Jesus. No sirree Bob.”

  Minogue turned his gaze on Kilmartin but didn’t see him. He knew as well as Kilmartin that there had been a stay of execution on the current structure of the Murder Squad for several years. The Squad had been slated to move to Garda Headquarters proper in the Phoenix Park, adjacent to the Forensic Science Lab and the nabobs who could look over Kilmartin’s shoulder day to day.

  But by dint of Kilmartin’s work, the Squad had not yet been folded back into its parent group, the Technical Bureau. Kilmartin had parleyed, parried and placated his way into preserving his fiefdom. He had taken in more trainees from Garda Divisions all over the country. He had circulated Murder Squad detectives through other areas of the Technical Bureau to broaden their expertise. Kilmartin had made exemplary use of the new and emerging technologies. He had integrated computers and new communications protocols flawlessly. He had sat through complaint sessions with ranking Gardai from the country who were riled at having to run to Dublin for help in murder investigations.

  “I really don’t know any more than yourself, Jimmy.”

  Kilmartin changed tack.

  “Maybe you don’t give a fiddler’s fart, Matt.”

  “Well, there are days…”

  Kilmartin leaned in over his desk.

  “Look, head-the-ball. You think I don’t know what’s going on? Me bollicks. I know you. Shy but willing, we say at home, like an ass chewing thistles. You know Tynan a damn sight better than I do. Find out what the hell he thinks we don’t do well here. What we can do to keep him away. Budget? Public relations? More trainees? Christ, he can’t complain about the stats! Didn’t we clear 95 per cent last year? Well…aside from the feuding, of course.”

  A feud between the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army had blown a large statistical hole in the Squad’s proud record. As though to taunt Kilmartin personally, both groups had taken up the habit of abducting a victim in the North and then killing him inside the border of the Republic-or vice versa. More often than not, this grisly ruse left the Royal Ulster Constabulary, whom Kilmartin despised, the kidnapping investigation and the Gardai the murder investigation.

  Kilmartin’s tone had grown moody.

  “It’s just that I know Tynan is looking right through me anytime I talk to him,” he said.

  Bewleys in Grafton Street would be just about right at this time of the day. The dinnertime mob gone. But the rain? Jam the car up on the path in Dawson Street and scamper over. With any luck it’d be robbed. How much would insurance pay out for an eight-year-old Fiat…?

  “Well?” Kilmartin repeated.

  “I’ll give it my considered opinion. Will that do you?”

  Kilmartin scowled and fixed Minogue with a one-eyed glare.

  “When will you be talking to Monsignor Tynan, then?”

  The irritation rushed back to Minogue.

  “Jimmy-” Kilmartin waved away his response.

  “I know, I know,” he interrupted. “ ‘Tynan plays above board.’ ‘He’d come straight to me to sort anything out.’ ‘He’d do right by us.’ Hail Mary, Holy Mary, and the rest of it. All I’m saying is-”

  “I’ll phone and see.”

  “Ah, Jases! I’d sooner you said nothing than go around to him with a puss on you. He’ll know I asked you.”

  Minogue rubbed his eyes.

  “You’re an iijit sometimes, Matt. All I’m trying to tell you is that the personal touch is what clinches things. I’m not asking you to butter him up. Look, I can tell you straight out that I know”-Kilmartin paused and pointed his finger at the desktop-“I know that Tynan thinks very highly of you-”

  “He’s never asked me once-”

  “Shut up a minute and listen. I don’t resent that one bit. Doesn’t bother me one iota that you might have more of Tynan’s ear than I do. Not one bit. And Tynan’s not stupid.”

  “I’ll pass that news on to him for you.”

  “Don’t be a smart arse, you. Listen. Tynan has to make some response to the Divisional Supers, we all know that. They want their own glory. What’ll decide Tynan in the end is not the computers and the stats. It’ll be the human factor. It’s our culture sure, man! H
ere, come on. You know what I’m getting at, don’t you?” Kilmartin rapped his knuckles on his colleague’s shoulder and gave Minogue a pantomime wink.

  “Well…”

  “Here, I’ll tell you in plain English. What the hell does Tynan need from us so’s he’ll leave us alone? Am I getting through to you?”

  Minogue nodded. Kilmartin beamed.

  “Ah, you’re a star! A real trooper. We’ll say no more about it. Now, tell us a bit more about this Saint place.”

  “Santorini. It’s in Greece, I told you. Cradle of civilisation, don’t you know.”

  “Oho! Greece is right. You’d want to watch you don’t end up on the flat of your back there with the runs, boyo.” Kilmartin nodded solemnly. “They cook up bits of meat and what-have-you there. Right in the street, bejases. A pal of Maura’s went there and spent half her holiday in the jacks-”

  Minogue stared back at his superior.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Jim. Very sorry.”

  Kilmartin guffawed.

  “I’m sure you are,” said the Chief Inspector, hearty again. “Now shag off with yourself, ya bowsie. But phone me when you get your leg in the door with Tynan.”

  Minogue reviewed the statements taken from one Tommy-John Casey several weeks ago. Casey had been in a dispute with a relation over the rent of pasture in the townland of Inisgeall, County Mayo. Casey and his victim, Patrick Tuohy, had repaired to a pub in Ballina in the hopes, Casey maintained, of coming to an amicable arrangement. The two men had continued drinking until midnight, whereupon Tommy-John Casey left the pub, got into his car and ran over Tuohy on a narrow road a mile outside town. Didn’t know what had come over him, Casey had repeated over and over again. Kilmartin had read the statement with Minogue. What came over him, Kilmartin had scoffed, was the car. Casey had been contrite and candid with the Gardai. Minogue, unimpressed, had pointed to the fact that Casey had driven a further two hundred yards along the road beyond the point where he had catapulted Tuohy over the hedge, smashing his windscreen and leaving Tuohy dying, his skull shattered.