The Going Rate (28 page)

“I have to,” she murmured. “It's nearly a week.”

He watched her take out her earrings.

“Good going,” he said.

She pulled off her sweater. He counted two, then three rolls under her brassiere when she bent down to tie her runners. He returned to the dishes, and splayed his fingers over the plates that lay just below the surface of the luke-warm water.

There was no way you could just stage dog fights for a film.

Bríd stood then.

“How are you feeling now?”

“I'm grand.”

“Must have been one of those bugs. That twenty-four-hour bug going around.”

He came up with a smile.

“You looked pretty wiped, I have to say,” she said.

He concentrated on scraping off some of the dried sauce. Bríd didn't move off yet. He looked back at her. She was smiling at him, tenderly.

“You're very good,” she said. “I sometimes forget to tell you.”

He knew that she meant it. He tried to show he appreciated it.

“You're on a roll I think,” she said. “You've got that look about you, that faraway look. A portrait of the artist.”

“Are you coming on to me?”

“What if I am? Remember the Bois?”

He feigned shock.

“If your students could hear you.”

“Actually,” she whispered, “thinking about that makes it even better. But you know that. Come on. You always go for the edge, the danger. Don't you?”

“Yeah, well,” he said.

She watched him wash Aisling's plate. He wondered if his irritation showed now.

“‘What do women want?'” he said.

When she said nothing, he stopped.

“No one believes Freud anymore,” he tried. “A joke?”

She reached up suddenly and drew back a strand of hair from his forehead.

“It won't always be this way, Dermot.”

“I know.”

“You'll get the recognition you deserve. Really. The work you need.”

Again he tried to smile.

“I always believed in you,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“You're a good father.”

It was almost as much as he could manage. He looked down at the water.

“So tell me,” she said, her voice gone soft again. “Is this new one the one?”

For the moment he didn't understand.

“Underworld, etc.?”

“I think so,” he said. “Yes.”

“Just don't be getting a crush on one of their molls now.”

“As if.”

She pulled on her Belfast Marathon T-shirt, and zipped up the windbreaker.

“Where did I put the Yellow Peril, Der?”

“It's on the back of the door in the toilet.”

She came back wearing the reflective vest. She closed the door softly behind her.

He had some forks left at the bottom of the sink and that would be that. He wiped the counter. Moving the germs around, really. He reached down into the lukewarm water and pulled the stopper. He'd seen people washing utensils with sand, on the BBC documentary about the… Touareg – that was the name of Tony's car, a Touareg. Those three women on the bus could hardly be Touaregs. No way.

The phone rang softly. He remembered Bríd setting it that way so Aisling wouldn't be woken up. His fingers were slippery on the plastic.

“So how's the script then?”

“Who is this?”

“How soon you forget. The script, are you going to use the bit with those two at the pub earlier?”

“You're…?”

“Come on. Has it been that long?”

Fanning clutched the phone harder.

“That's over. I told you. That's too far for me.”

“Really? Could have been worse I say.”

“Look, come on. I'm not involved in this. This kind of thing I mean. I told you, it's not for me.”

“We didn't do it for you, did we. Let's do more of that research tonight. It won't take long. Small matter, but you'd be glad you came.”

Fanning looked around the kitchen.

“I can't. I can't.”

“You can't? No obligation now. Nobody's saying you're ‘involved' kind of involved you know?”

It was that accent again, with the unexpected sidesteps from Dublin to London.

“No charge.”

“I'm sorry but look, it's over. It's not what I want. It's just, well I'm not going to do the thing. I'm going to move on to another project.”

“Another project? That mind of yours is just going, going, going. I wish I was like that. You know, able to make things up, just like that.”

Fanning's grip on the phone tightened. He held his breath before speaking.

“For every project that gets done, there's ten others you throw out.”

“What waste. Tell you what – one last go, one last, what do you call it – audition.”

“Let me think about it.”

“I can wait. Just you and me. No funny stuff.”

“No West Ham.”

“Naw. He was just over for a holiday, you know. Temple Bar. Rah, rah, rah.”

“No crime. No people getting–”

“Of course not.”

“Okay. I'll get in touch then, if I want to go ahead.”

“Really? How will you do that?”

Fanning realized with a shock that Cully had been ready for this.

“Murph,” he said quickly. “I'll get in touch through Murph. Only so's I can get in touch with you.”

“Okay. Like I said, I can wait.”

An ambulance siren grew louder outside and began to lessen as it passed. When it had passed, Fanning took his palm from his ear. In his earpiece he heard it peak and begin to fade again.

“How about an hour?” Cully said. “How about that?”

“An hour? No, there's no way this evening. I'll get in touch when–”

“–What?” said Cully, but with neither impatience nor anger that Fanning could detect. “She's going to run a marathon or something?”

Shock ran down from Fanning's head and erupted in his chest. He found himself walking backward as his knees gave out.

Chapter 28

B
Y NINE O
'
CLOCK
, Minogue and Wall had A Matthews parcelled on a timeline for the night of the murder. Matthews had turned out to be the smarter of the pair. Where Twomey sweated and argued, Matthews turned inward, his voice often so low that they had to ask him to repeat what he had said. He seemed to want to lose his words, his voice even, in the small goatee – or whatever they called those preposterous half-beard experiments they went for so much now, Minogue reflected sourly – that he kept fingering. A shorter as well as a smarter man than his friend Twomey, Matthews had gotten Minogue's antennae quivering early on. As subdued as he looked here, this off-again on-again sheet-metal apprentice might well conceal an explosive temper.

The same Matthews was gone very pale now. His bottom lip had gone dry and he made the error of picking at it until it bled. Even when he spoke he spent a lot of time staring at the tabletop.

Minogue was in familiar territory now, and it wasn't his favourite. He had felt the dip coming, when his belief that these two were the warp on the murder began to slide. It surprised him a little, because he could not recall why he had begun to think this, or rather, to feel this. It left him dispirited but also grimly satisfied that his unease at what looked like good fortune and timing could now have its way.

As the hours went on, and the time was closing on the legal rights of the two men to be left sleep, he wondered now if he'd be taking home his secret with him tonight, that neither Aidan Matthews nor the others had killed Klos. Neither Wall nor Duggan need know his intuition until they too had faced up to the unease they were surely beginning to feel now too. It would take them longer, that was all. More importantly, Minogue could be dead wrong about the two men, and Duggan and Wall should be left to run their minds freely without the undertow of Minogue's skepticism.

Still, Minogue continued to press Matthews on the times. Twice he had left with Wall and they had had a confab with Duggan in the hall. Duggan was exasperated, but kept good self-control in the interviews. He had roped in a Garda in civvies, a keener, to fill out the interview room, and to do the silent glare routine.

“Okay,” said Wall. Matthews glanced up.

“Let's run it again. Eight o'clock, you and the two girls and Twomey are down in this car park place, the steps. Is that so?”

“That's what I told you.”

“Tell me the time you were there with Twomey.”

“Around eight.”

“You were there before the girls.”

“Yep.”

“Nobody else around.”

Matthews sighed.

“No.”

“But you said people knew about this hidey hole.”

“Yeah. But it's not crowded like. I mean it's cold at night. The summer, there'd be more people.”

“So you and Twomey are down there and you have your paraphernalia.”

“It's not paraphernalia.”

“Drugs.”

“A joint? That's not ‘Drugs.'”

“You and Twomey are there for how long?”

“I don't know, I told you.”

“Was it ten minutes, quarter of an hour?”

“I don't know.”

Minogue drew a line through eight-ten and wrote eight-fifteen beside it.

“You're already high though,” Wall said.

“A buzz. Not high.”

“You smoked up there while you were waiting.”

“No.”

He raised his head to look at Wall.

“That's what I'm saying. Two joints is all we had. So how is that dealing? Dope is nothing.”

“You left the hard stuff at home, did you?”

“What hard stuff? There's nothing, I'm telling you.”

“So the search of your house, of your bedroom, is going to show up?”

“It'll show up nothing, that's what.”

Wall looked at his watch.

“Well we should know in a little while,” he said.

“What? Now? Don't you need, like, a search warrant.”

“Of course we do,” Wall said, “but murder investigations tend to be at the top of the list here.”

Matthews shook his head and breathed out hard. He rubbed his face with his right hand and he resumed his slump.

“Twomey is saying that you're number one,” said Wall.

“You said that already. But I still don't know what that means.”

“It means you're the one with the goods, with the contacts. You're the supplier. Right?”

“That's rubbish.”

“Well at least you know he's ready to say anything to get out of this.”

“I never heard him say anything, did I.”

“He's the kind of fella who is more of a follower. The kind who caves in sooner than later. I think you know that. Don't you?”

Matthews said nothing. Wall waited and then exchanged a look with Minogue. The inspector nodded toward the clock.

“Okay, it's half eight,” Wall said.

“Pardon?”

“It's half eight – that evening I mean. The two girls have showed up. You're sitting there on those steps. Right?”

Matthews nodded.

“Answer that question there,” Minogue said.

“Yes, I – we are sitting on the steps.”

“And you're…?”

“You know already,” said Matthews. “I told you twice.”

“What are you doing there on the steps?” Minogue asked sharply.

“I am smoking a joint,” said Matthews.

“I?” said Wall.

“We are smoking a joint.”

“That you provided.”

“That I provided. Sharing. Sharing a joint.”

“And this is ten minutes after the two girls met Mr. Klos.”

“Ten? I don't know. Like I said, it had just happened. They said, Tara said. It was a laugh, see? This bloke wandering the streets.”

“That's when you formed a plan then. To go after this man.”

“No way. No.”

“Twomey says you did,” said Wall.

“No he didn't. That's because nobody made any plan.”