The Going Rate
Praise for John Brady's MATT MINOGUE series:
Islandbridge
GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2006 DASHIEL HAMMETT PRIZE A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Particularly powerful stuff...genius.” â T
ORONTO
S
TAR
Wonderland
GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100
“IF THERE ARE AUTHORS BETTER THAN JOHN BRADY at chronicling the events of modern Ireland, I HAVEN'T YET READ THEM . . . Brady's best so far.” â G
LOBE AND
M
AIL
“ANOTHER SUPERB NOVEL BY A WRITER OF INTERNATIONAL STATURE.” â T
ORONTO
S
TAR
“BRADY'S BEST: informed, subtle and intelligent, with Minogue revealing a hitherto unseen depth of soul, humour and emotion.”
â T
HE
T
IMES
UK
A Carra King
GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100
“DENSE AND MULTILAYERED . . . a treasure of a crime novel.”
â T
ORONTO
S
TAR
“Brady has a great eye for the telling detail . . . and a lovely slow pace of storytelling. There's much talk and thought about events and you can't read this book at warp speed. Instead, save it to savour.”
â G
LOBE AND
M
AIL
All Souls
“As lyrical and elegantly styled as the last three . . . A FIRST-RATE STORY WITH MARVELLOUS CHARACTERS . . . Another masterful tale from a superior author.” â G
LOBE AND
M
AIL
“Nothing gets in the way of pace, narrative thrust or intricate story-telling.” â I
RISH
T
IMES
“A KNOCKOUT.” â K
IRKUS
R
EVIEWS
Kaddish in Dublin
“MATT MINOGUE, THE MAGNETIC CENTRE OF THIS SUPERB SERIES . . . and Brady's tone of battered lyricism are the music which keep drawing us back to this haunting series.” â N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
“Culchie Colombo with a liberal and urbane heart . . . like all the best detective stories it casts its net widely over its setting . . .
[Minogue is] a character who should run and run.” â I
RISH
T
IMES
Unholy Ground
“RIVETING . . . The suspense builds to barely bearable intensity . . . crackles with pungent Irish idiom and its vignettes of the country's everyday life.” â T
ORONTO
S
TAR
“Excellent Sergeant Matt Minogue . . . MARVELLOUS DIALOGUE, as nearly surreal as a Magritte postcard the sergeant likes, and a twisting treacherous tale.” â S
UNDAY
T
IMES
A Stone of the Heart
“Towers above the mystery category as AN ELOQUENT, COMPELLING NOVEL . . . a tragic drama involving many characters, each so skillfully realized that one virtually sees and hears them in this extraordinary novel . . .” â P
UBLISHERS
W
EEKLY
“A MASTERFULLY CRAFTED WORK of plot, atmosphere and especially characterization . . . Minogue, thoughtful, clear-eyed and perhaps too sensitive . . . is a full-blooded character built for the long haul of a series . . .” â M
ACLEAN'S
The Good Life
“Brilliant Craftsmanship.” â L
IBRARY
J
OURNAL
“Brady's dead-on ear for dialogue and his knack for creating instantly engaging characters keep the pages flipping...one line of prose leads inexorably, compulsively to the next...” â Q
UILL
& Q
UIRE
“Brady, like Chandler, has a poet's eye for place...(he) is emerging as one of the supreme storytellers of Canadian crime fictions.” â G
LOBE AND
M
AIL
JOHN
BRADY
The Going Rate
A MATT MINOGUE MYSTERY
McArthur & Company
Toronto
First published in Canada in 2008 by
McArthur & Company
322 King Street West, Suite 402
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1J2
www.mcarthur-co.com
This ebook edition published in 2011 by McArthur & Company
Copyright © 2008 John Brady
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the expressed written consent of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Brady, John, 1955-
The going rate : a Matt Minogue mystery / John Brady.
ISBN 978-1-55278-786-1
I. Title.
PS8553.R245G59 2009 Â Â Â Â C813'.54 Â Â Â Â C2009-904696-2
eISBN 978-1-77087-095-6
Cover, Image & Composition by Mad Dog Design
The publisher would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Canada Council for our publishing activities. The publisher further wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the OMDC for our publishing program.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la via diritta era smarrita
â D
ANTE
For Hanna,
Strength and love; trust and patience.
Contents
Darren Mulhall's last day would be short.
T
HE DAYLIGHT PART BEGAN
with his awakening to the sound of a door chime. Pieces soon began to fall into place. He was in Martin's house, in Martin's bed. Martin's wife Bernie was no longer beside him, however.
He remembered vodka, and lager, and a bit of hash that Bernie had found in one of Martin's toolboxes after his arrest. It was gone three o'clock when he had finished with Bernie. They had done pretty well everything. He remembered her complaining she didn't want to do it anymore. Well, that only egged him on, and sore or not, she looked happy enough with the proceedings. Of course she could have been faking it. Big surprise, there. It wouldn't be the first time, would it, and she was a bit afraid of him, after all. He didn't mind that one bit.
His mouth was cracked and furry, and his eyes felt like they had been shoved back hard into his head. He rubbed the hardened goop from the edges of his eyes, and he tried to swallow. There was light on the curtains. He found the alarm: nearly ten o'clock? Jesus. He lay still, listening. There were footsteps coming up the stairs now. He kicked away the sheet and the eiderdown. The chill air washed over him, and he rolled sideways to reach under the bed for the pistol. He was on his feet when Bernadette came in the door. She was breathing hard. She wasn't even trying to hold her dressing gown closed. Her mouth hung open and for several moments she stood still, her chest heaving so much the shadow between her breasts seemed to have a life of its own.
“I don't know,” she whispered. “Gas company? On a Good Friday?”
He kept up his stare, waiting for a giveaway sign.
“What're you looking at me like that for? I didn't call them, did I.”
The redness around her mouth and neck from last night seemed to be getting even deeper.
The doorbell's ring was ten times louder this time.
“Gas company,” came a Dublin accent. “Anybody home here?”
Mulhall picked up his underpants and jeans on his way to the window. He got his second leg in as he inched the curtain away from the wall. The white van out on the road was open, and there were tools and pipes on the bed of it. An average looking joe in overalls was setting up a workmate by the curb.
“I don't know anything about this, Darrenâ”
“Shut up a minute, will you.”
He realized that he was shaking, and that she could see it.
“They look okay,” she said. “Don't they?”
“I'll decide that,” he said.
He put the pistol on the bed, and leaned his back against the wall while he pulled on his jeans. A cool head, and a dry pants, he thought. Overreacting was the worst thing to do.
“Give me me Nikes there. No â no socks.”
His T-shirt was on the chest of drawers.
“Me phone,” he said. “Were you using it?”
She shook her head, but her eyes stayed on the pistol.
“No, no. I don't think I did.”
“Go back downstairs. Tell him you're coming.”
She seemed paralyzed. Her eyes moved from the pistol and back to him. He swore and shoved her toward the door. He tried to keep in step with her as she descended the stairs, whispering.