Unholy Ground imm-2 Read online

  "Likely, sir," Keating argued. "This is an isolated spot, after all."

  "Why didn't the victim drive up the lane and park by the house?"

  Hoey shrugged.

  "Turning space is a bit tight around the door here, sir… I don't know."

  "All right," Minogue sighed, shaking himself out of his speculation. "Enough of this headbanging. Let's start on filling in the blanks on this poor devil. See if we can place him for this past few days. I better start me prowl. Give us that Polaroid, Pat. Just in case." spacebarthing

  Minogue entered the house. He tiptoed over the clear plastic sheets which the technicians had spread on the floor. Minogue's steps found a creaking runner as he went up the stairs. There was a strong smell of whiskey, stronger as he ascended the stairs. There was little furniture in the hall, nothing that didn't have a daily utility. A hamper for dirty laundry had been overturned. A coat and umbrella stand had been toppled. The coats scattered on the floor looked like human scarecrow figures to Minogue as he glanced down over the banisters at the carnage below. The landing was narrow and dark, with no natural light but what an open door lent from one of the rooms. The technician walked heavily to the door.

  "Is that you, Hoey, ya bollocks?" he said.

  Minogue turned as the technician stepped over the threshold and into the landing.

  "I'm not Hoey, I'm somebody else," Minogue said.

  The stricken technician froze, the horsehair brush dangling from his plastic-gloved fingers.

  "Oh, I thought it was — "

  Minogue's feet sounded on the polished wooden floor. The smell of whiskey was overpowering now. A skylight had been cut into the roof over this room. Although the room was small, there was a space enough for a drafting table and an easel. Paper had been swept into a heap on the floor. Pencils and small paintbrushes were scattered all over the room. Minogue heard whispering from the hallway. He heard his own name mentioned, and he wasn't at all displeased at the alarm with which it was hissed out.

  "Are ye done in here?" Minogue called out.

  "Nearly, sir. Nearly," an earnest voice replied. Built-in shelves flanked both sides of the chimney-breast. The fireplace itself had been walled in and covered up by an electric heater. Pieces from the shattered whiskey bottles had reached every corner of the room. Scores of books had been knocked off the shelves, gathering in a heap by an overturned chair. Minogue glanced at some of the titles. Ancient monuments of the Irish countryside, a Spanish-English dictionary, books by Gerald Durrell about animals. A sink had been fitted into the wall next to the window. The walls themselves were covered in drawings. The drawings didn't look showy to Minogue-rather they seemed to be attempts to better draw a subject, pointers to improve the next version.

  "Yes, we're all done in here, sir. And then there's daylight tomorrow and-"

  "And ye'll be back with a vengeance," said Minogue. He turned to the two faces in the doorway. Grown schoolboy faces awaiting reprimand.

  "And excuse the language, if you don't mind, sir. It's just that we know him and we do be slagging him. You know how it is."

  Minogue put on his best version of a mollified teacher's face.

  "To be sure, lads. Tell me, how long more here tonight?"

  "Half an hour about. It's an awful sight, isn't it?"

  Minogue nodded and turned to examine the room again. Drawers of clothes had been upended on the floor. He tiptoed around the clothes and stood by the window. It faced east so far as he could tell. He walked closer and looked out. A scattered sprinkle of lights from other houses tucked under the mountains.

  There was nothing on the easel. What would be worth painting from this window? He hunkered down by the sheets of drawing paper which had been swept violently to the floor. Straightening one, Minogue felt a tremor of recognition. He stood back and studied the pencil drawing. The work showed practice and mastered technique on what Minogue would have said was a very difficult project. Though these concentric patterns could be found on other ceremonial stones from Ireland's prehistory, Minogue was certain that the stone and patterns in this drawings were from the ruins of Tully church. Minogue's hands remembered the warm, smooth granite of Tully. Succour. Was it that which attracted Combs there?

  Minogue had been drawn to Tully and its stones by his sense that it had been built, like so many other churches, on a site of druidic worship. Several fields away was a tumulus, the burial site of a chieftain, which predated the upstart saints Patrick and Bride by a millennium. Less than a mile over the fields was one of the best-preserved dolmens in the country, ranking even with those stark masses of the ridges of The Burren in County Clare.

  He flattened out other sketches from the heap of paper. There were charcoal sketches of stones with whorls worked into them, symbols of sun and moon. Beneath the sketches were pencil drawings of a dolmen, the huge menacing boulder on its three stone legs.

  "Mr Combs was English?" Minogue called out.

  "I believe so, sir," said the technician, a brick-red-faced young man with the beginnings of a porter-belly. He had the heavy blond eyebrows of Norse descendants in County Wexford.

  "Yes, sir. They have his passport and everything taken away in the bags, but he was definitely from across the water."

  Minogue turned toward the window again. When he didn't hear the two moving, he turned back to them. They couldn't help his puzzlement any more than he could himself.

  "Thanks very much, lads."

  He prowled the other rooms upstairs. A bedroom that Combs must have used, with the clothes torn off the bed. The mattress had been slashed on both sides. Looking for money in there…? A bathroom with new fixtures. The medicine box had been emptied out, too. Next door was an empty room the size of a box-room. The old man had been economical to the point of asceticism with furnishings. Minogue kept expecting to open a door on a room that would be cluttered with the stuff which should fill houses. There was none. He couldn't decide if the sense of incompleteness here was a sign of transience or a permanent feature of an austere life. If this was it, Minogue thought, then the old man had led a lonely life.

  Downstairs again, Minogue spied Hoey sitting on the kitchen doorstep. He was lighting a cigarette. Minogue looked into the kitchen- Almost like snow. Eerie. A fly was trapped between the curtain and the glass. It buzzed noisily, throwing itself against the glass, then rested. The outline on the linoleum tiles was the shape of a body lain on its side with the knees drawn up a bit, arms into the chest. A flash and the motorised ejection whirr of the Polaroid startled Minogue. He had been leaning on the button. Iijit…

  The living-room had boasted no knick-knacks, it seemed. Books borrowed from the public library still lay atop a low table, the chaos on the floor all about it. There were no plants in the room, no pictures on the walls. Two ashtrays, both clean: copies of the Irish Times; magazines scattered on the floor. A colour telly with rabbit ears had been toppled, the screen cracked. The gravid atmosphere of the house begin to weigh on Minogue. He sat down on the doorstep next to Hoey.

  "Who do we have available as of tomorrow morning, Shea?"

  "There's you and me, sir. Pat Keating, of course. The two detectives from Stepaside; I know one of them-Driscoll. There's two Gardai from Stepaside taking statements and feeding them to Driscoll for us. I phoned in to get a crop of likeues off the Criminal Record Office… Johnnie Carey is back in court tomorrow again and it might be for most of the week. The pub stabbing back in March. The defence threw a surprise in last Friday and they're rubbing Johnnie hard on how he got the confession. He's lost to us for the week, I'd say."

  Hoey drew on the cigarette. Minogue had a sudden lust for a cigarette himself. Keating stepped around the seated policemen.

  "Well, the percentages so far," Keating began with a yawn, "tell me he was killed right in the kitchen. I was talking to the lads who went through the kitchen… "

  Minogue's attention was taken by the lurid light from the spots flaring against the gable wall. A uniformed Garda wal
ked gingerly by them, nodding.

  "… Nothing to suggest a struggle in or near the door. Not dragged in either."

  "Heavy class of man anyhow," Hoey added.

  "Can we place him at all yet, for the Saturday?" asked Minogue.

  "Driscoll and the Stepaside lads are chipping away there, sir," Hoey reminded him. "They know the area. Never knew this Combs, though. A reclam-… a recl-"

  "A recluse," Minogue said.

  "That's it. A loner. Mrs Hartigan says he took a jar in the pub all right. He wasn't a total hermit."

  "In a bit of a state, I suppose. Is she at home now?" Minogue went oh. Hoey flicked open his notebook.

  "Here's her number. The house is about half a mile back the road."

  Minogue rose and yawned. Hoey stood then. Keating stared off at some point in the darkness beyond the oasis of light. Minogue followed Hoey down the lane. Hoey yawned again as he got into Minogue's Fiat, holding his notebook to his mouth. Keating took the radio-car which he and Hoey had driven out from Dublin.

  "So the Killer is back on his feet," Hoey whispered through a yawn. Minogue spied Hoey's embarrassment with a glance. Kilmartin's nickname had slipped out. He smiled faintly at Hoey in the green glow of the dash light. Hoey rubbed his nose and switched on the interior light. He looked through his notes of his interview with Mrs Hartigan. Minogue drove off into the night. Kilmartin, Killer, he mused. Hoey absent-mindedly lit another cigarette. Hardly anyone has nicknames anymore, Minogue realised. What was that a sign of? Progress?

  The nickname originated with quips which dated back to the renaming of the Murder Squad. Unlike its like-named counterpart in London, from which the name and the organisational structure had been derived, the Squad's name had gone under to the dictates of more hygienic prose. That prose had drifted in on airwaves and print from the American century which had lain offshore until the late 1950s. Irish people were now expected to rationlise their lives. They should now express opinions about the balance of payments and to use words from the new religion, words like fulfillment, relationship, interaction…

  The Murder Squad had emerged from this confusion as the Investigation Section. It formed a branch of the Technical Bureau, itself a branch of the Central Detective Unit. The CDU's new headquarters was based close to the City Centre in Harcourt Square, and CDU detectives rubbed shoulders with the other glamour boys of the Security Section, the Special Branch and the Serious Crime Squad. Austrian-made folding submachine-pistols, souped-up pursuit cars, computerisedradio and telephone links, border shoot-outs… the whole shemozzle, as Kilmartin was wont to remark caustically over a Friday afternoon pint to Minogue. Television policemen, he called them.

  The Murder Squad's transfer from the claustrophobia of Dublin Castle had brought it to St John's Road, close to Garda Headquarters in The Phoenix Park. Detectives working on the Murder Squad didn't mind a bit of glamour themselves. When other Gardai would ask them what it was like to work in the Investigation Section, they were told that it was murder, handily consonant with the nickname of the head of the section-the Killer himself, Kilmartin. The conceit around Kilmartin's nickname added to the Squad's reputation as being driven, meticulous and successful.

  Less out of delicacy than sympathy, Minogue did not air his view that Jimmy Kilmartin was such a tiger abroad because he was a kitten at home.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mrs Hartigan's husband hovered uneasily by the door to the parlour. The Hartigan's house was a County Council labourer's cottage, scrupulously clean and suffused with the smell of a mixed grill. Framed photographs of weddings and children were marshalled on a dresser next to the door. Mrs Hartigan perched in the corner of a thickly stuffed sofa. A restless poodle lay across her oblivious feet. Two patches of colour stood out on her pallid cheeks. Her eyes were ringed red. Below the eyes her face seemed to sag. Like a stroke-victim, Minogue thought. Hoey sat next to a new television set while Minogue fell back into a tired spring armchair.

  "To be sure, Mr Hartigan," Minogue looked up at the grizzled pensioner in the doorway. "Rest assured that your good wife will suffer no duress."

  Hartigan scratched skeptically at a leathery ear.

  "The doctor says she should be taking it cushy. She has blood pressure."

  "Mr Hartigan. Our best opportunity for catching the person who committed this crime is with quick work. As much information as we can gather, as quickly as we can gather it."

  "It's wicked," Mrs Hartigan interrupted. Her fixed stare hadn't shifted from the fireplace. "To do that… and the mess. It was like… I don't know what."

  Hartigan withdrew, closing the door soundlessly. Minogue didn't care that he might be eavesdropping from the hall. Hoey flipped open his notebook to a fresh page.

  "I spoke to this nice young man, didn't I?" Mrs Hartigan said drearily.

  "You did, ma'am," Hoey said. "A little more might be the key. We won't tax you with repeating things, though, so we won't."

  Minogue gathered himself at the back of the chair.

  "Now, Mrs Hartigan, I know you didn't see Mr Combs since last Friday. But do you know what he did on his weekends? In general, like. A Saturday."

  "Well. I told this nice man here that Mr Combs took a drink. He liked a drink. That's not to say… But Joseph, my husband, saw him the odd time in the pub. Up in Fox's pub."

  "Did he entertain visitors?"

  "No, he didn't. I don't know what he did the days he'd go into Dublin, though. Or on his little trips out for his drawing and painting. Did I tell you that he liked the horses?"

  Hoey nodded. _

  "The races. Leopardstown, for a flutter. He used to say that-'for a flutter.' Oh," she sighed as she shifted in the sofa, "he had expressions I never heard of before. Sometimes he would have me in fits. Putting on the talk, you know. Sometimes after a little sup of drink he'd be very funny."

  Mrs Hartigan seemed to catch herself. She frowned as she looked up over at Minogue.

  "I'm not saying that Mr Combs was a, you know…"

  "A heavy drinker?"

  "Yes."

  Her expression changed abruptly into a withered smile.

  "I don't think he gave people a chance to know him, to like him. Talk to Joseph there and he'll tell you. He was always asking me what Mr Combs was like. People didn't know him. He could be terrible funny. Charming and gentle…"

  She looked toward Hoey but her eyes did not focus. The poodle's legs twitched. It bared its teeth in sleep.

  "Yes," she murmured. "A terrible ordinary man, if people only knew. Odd, certainly, but what of it? I remember him one day he had me in fits of laughing; he heard something on the radio and he turned it up loud. I came in from the kitchen to see what the commotion was and there he was, a glass of whiskey in his hand, sort of dancing around the room. Some chorus, a man's chorus from Russia. They were singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' in Russian. Their language, you see. He thought that was priceless. He once told me that I was a socialist but I didn't know it. But not in a nasty way, more a bit of tickling and fun. An educated man, you see. Never had to say it, you just knew it."

  Hoey caught Minogue's eye.

  "I'll tell you something now," Mrs Hartigan went on without prompting. "I forgot he was an Englishman half the time. Such a nice way about him when he wanted to be…"

  "Was he less than nice by times?" Minogue asked.

  "Oh, I don't mean anything like that. I must say, I don't blame him a bit for being fond of a drop."

  "You met none of his family or relatives," Minogue tried.

  Mrs Hartigan shook her head.

  "He didn't have any, he told me. But he had friends, I suppose. I don't know. I never saw any in the house at all."

  Minogue counted to three before addressing her again.

  "Mrs Hartigan, was Mr Combs homosexual?"

  "Do you mean about women, that he never married…?" her question tapered off.

  "A man who's not attracted to women, but to men," said Minogue. "Have you ever…
?"

  "Of course I have. It's on the television all the time," she murmured. "But I can tell you policemen, because I know you want to do right by Mr Combs. Yes. I wondered sometimes if he was-"

  She looked up again and swivelled her eyes slowly toward Hoey.

  "But I never seen one thing to suggest to me that he was one of them. I can tell you that for certain. People'll always talk, make up stories in their imagination. But I suppose I wouldn't know what to look for, I mean how would a body know? A woman of my age especially?"

  Hoey cleared his throat. Mrs Hartigan's expression looked to be caught between a smile and mordant gravity.

  "Certain types of books and such? Pictures and things, perhaps? A manner of speaking about people?" he said.

  Mrs Hartigan's face contracted into a frown.

  "No such thing as I ever came across. Oh no. He wasn't nervous around a woman the way a lot of men are, even married men are. He knew how to make you laugh when he wanted to. And it's not like we don't know about such matters as regards sex and so on, you know, what with the telly and everything."

  "Did he mention any places he liked to go to in Dublin, Mrs Hartigan?" Minogue asked.

  "No, he didn't, as a matter of fact. It was like I was explaining to this nice young man here the first time this evening…"

  Hoey sat back in his chair. Minogue waited out her ramble.

  "Nearly two years you did the housekeeping for him?"

  "That's right."

  She dabbed at the corner of an eye, heaved a sigh and went on in a lower voice.

  "It's hard and you being old and having nobody. You lose interest, I think. Even if you have your hobbies and a bit of reading. You need the contact. But he didn't, not much anyway. Or not as much as we're used to here. Mr Combs was interested in the place here, though; he was often flummoxed by some things here, I remember. Him asking me about the politics and the way the country is run. He'd smile and shake his head when I told him. I think he liked it here."