THE LOVE OF MISSING WOMEN
chapter two of a work in progress
“She’s a train when she’s rolling, Greg, and only an eejit walks in front of a train.”
Mellon smiled, then fetched the Inspector his whiskey. Tierney thanked him, and drank half of it quickly. “To Wigener,” he said. He looked at Mellon in a benign manner. “Question time, Greg. Ask and ye shall be answered.”
Mellon said, “The photograph taken outside The Barge?”
“What about it?”
“I don’t see any mention of the identity of the cameraman in the files. Did nobody ask Charlotte Kyle about him?”
Tierney glanced at Sergeant Hoare. “Who interviewed Charlotte Kyle? You remember?”
Mellon didn’t wait for Hoare to come up with the answer. “Her interview was conducted by Victor Riley. He seems to have done a whole bunch of the interviews in this case.”
“Young Victor likes getting out and about,” Tierney said. “He has what the bureaucrats call ‘people-skills’…Interviews always make me feel I’m sitting on a cluster of bleeding hemorrhoids. Victor now, that man could sit on his arse until all hell froze, waiting for answers.” He finished his drink and smacked his lips. “Maybe Victor overlooked the photograph. He’s only human. I suggest you visit Charlotte Kyle yourself.”
“I did that a couple of weeks ago.”
“And you didn’t ask her about the shadowy snapper?”
“I forgot about the photograph. So many details - ”
“Ah, so you see,” Tierney said. “Woods and trees, Greg. Talk to Charlotte Kyle again. Talk to Victor as well.”
“I thought he was on leave of absence.”
“He’s back now,” Tierney said. He clapped Mellon on the shoulder, then looked at his watch. He began to button his coat. “My desk calls. I hear the scream of unattended paperwork. Ready, Joseph?”
“Ready,” Hoare said.
The two policemen edged past Mellon, who watched them drift into the crowd. He lost sight of them. He finished his stout and thought of Frank Wigener. Dead in the night, heart failure. And his thoughts turned, as they usually did, to Lindsey, to the unsettling sense of emptiness that shrouded him. Was she in hiding? Had she lost her memory and even now walked mindless on a strand of beach in a distant country? Or had she run away with another guy, planning to re-emerge only when she thought the time was right? This particular question went round and round in his head with the menacing regularity of a carousel horse. A new passion, intimacies to which he wasn’t privy, her body now the preserve and delight of another man’s needs.
Did she think of him still?
Or was Mellon a castaway, utterly swept from mind?
Images and thoughts shook him, of course they did. They jarred him. They left him in a hopeless night-blue state of mind. But he liked to think he’d be relieved, even happy, if he discovered them to be true.
That way, he’d know she was alive.
In the lavatory, Tierney passed urine flecked with blood. The pain in his gut was a downright hoor. He’d been taking pills prescribed by his quack, the fuzzy-bearded Dr Gossip, for what he vaguely called ‘a kidney infection’. But they weren’t doing any good. He looked at Hoare in the next stall. Joseph always gazed up at the ceiling when he urinated, as if the business of expelling liquid waste was an indignity.
“You think your man’s gay?” Hoare asked.
“Gay? What a question, Joseph. Do you think he is?”
“I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t crossed my mind,” Hoare replied. “He has very fine soft hands and fingernails you’d expect on a banker. He has to shampoo his hair three times a day to get that soft glossy male-model look. I think he’s as queer as a shoe on backward.”
“He’s neat and tidy, granted. But that alone hardly makes him homosexual, Joseph. Besides, I’m pretty damn sure he has a mad love for the missing girl.”
“Oh? Has he said as much?”
“It’s in the way he speaks of her. It’s how his tongue lingers over her name, Joseph. Old romantics such as myself notice these signs.” Tierney felt searing flame in his belly. To collapse at this urinal and die. Oh the shame of it. They’d sing ribald songs at his wake. To the tune of Three Old Maids: Poor old Tierney died in the lavatory/his face all covered with pish.
Hoare said, “I wonder how much Donovan slipped the Commissioner when he was over here.”
“I hear astronomical figures bruited about, Joseph. Pocket change for Donovan. He drops a couple of million dollars, it’s like you losing a hundred euros at your Friday night poker session.” Tierney zipped up. The pain came and went. More coming than going, though. What did Dr Gossip know about anything? Fucking quack. A bollocks. A disgrace to the medical profession.
“And what do you suppose The Commissioner did with this, emm, donation?” Hoare asked.
“Given his need to be seen in the best social circles - networking, as they say - he probably bought himself a set of expensive golf-clubs and a lifetime membership at the K Club. Then, having gratified his own immediate desires, he’d deposit the balance in the Garda Benevolent Fund. I’m only guessing, mind you.” Tierney was quiet for a moment. “Donovan’s a pushy fucker. He’d blow his nose in your shroud.”
“I tried to put myself in Donovan’s shoes,” Hoare said, looking serious. “He’s suffering a terrible hardship.”
“Granted,” Tierney said. “But a quiet word is sometimes more effective than a hand-grenade, Joseph.”
The two men stepped into the street, where the wind blew cold, and discarded papers rattled in the gutters. As they walked past the Gaiety in the direction of the Green, Tierney recalled the one and only time he’d talked to Tom Donovan, when the man had come to Dublin from the States just after Lindsey’s disappearance. They met in Donovan’s suite at The Maybury, where he spent most of the time ringing room service and asking for a hamburger, rare, very rare. Three burgers were delivered over a period of fifteen minutes; the first two failed to impress. Donovan poked them and sniffed them. Overdone, medium – both discarded. Quality of bun poor, and stuffed with shards of unwanted greenery. The third burger, plain and unencumbered, disgorged blood. Donovan ate this burger tartar ravenously, then cleaned his fingers with a napkin, but was still dissatisfied for some reason.
He ordered six bottles of assorted cold beers. The harassed young room-waiter came with a tray bearing Smithwicks, Guinness, Tennants, McEwans, Carlsberg and Boddingtons. Without offering a bottle to Tierney, Donovan sipped each one. The McEwans was too fucking warm, Tennants too flat, Guinness too sour – on and on it went, this ale tasting, Donovan pushing rejected bottles aside with an imperious sweep of the arm.
Donovan said, Bad beer, terrible burgers. I’d heard Mick food was the pits.
Tierney gazed at the barely touched burgers and wanted to say, You should’ve brought your own fucking chef and brewer with you, arsehead, but he didn’t. His impression of Donovan was that of a boor, a strutting specimen of the New World order. Stick it on the Amex. Just keep the goodies coming. Where was the grief and the heavy concern Tierney had expected? Where the show of pain?
Would your daughter have any reason for just disappearing? Tierney asked, thinking his question tactful, simple enough.
Animal blood slicked down Donovan’s chin. He looked as if he’d just dined on a tiger. Meaning what?
A family falling-out, a quarrel, sharp words exchanged. Tierney spoke quietly.
That approach is so fucking banal, Donovan snorted. Something goes wrong, you rummage around inside the family. Usually the father. Is this the road you’re taking? Blaming Daddy because the family’s dysfunctional?
I didn’t suggest that, nor was I going to. Tierney had one of those moments when he sailed this close to smacking the American. A good one, direct to the gob. He even hardened his fist for the eventuality. Fuck the Yank. He’d rattle him some more, if he could. Why did she come to Ireland to live? Did she leave home with your permission or - ?
Donovan interrupted, thumping his bottle of Boddington’s on the table: What are you anyway? An Inspector? Does that mean you have psychology training?
None, Tierney said. Just the academy of hard knocks, boy, he thought. Just the backstreet school of fisticuffs. Want to find out?
Donovan said, Listen, I’ve come a long goddam way, and I want to see somebody a little higher up the ladder. Somebody I can deal with.
Riled, Tierney got up. He snapped shut his little notebook. He wished he’d snapped it with Donovan’s nose between the covers. For God’s sake, he was supposed to be helping the Yank; he wasn’t going to sit in a suite at The Maybury and get insulted. You want my superior, is that what you’re asking?
You’re fast on your feet, Donovan said.
Even today, Tierney burned when he remembered the encounter. He wished he’d delivered the cracking great blow he’d suppressed that morning.
Outside the shopping center Hoare farted. “What’s in that diet of yours?” Tierney asked. He wafted the air.
“You don’t want to know.”
Tierney made a face. “Damn right I don’t.”
contents©2006 Campbell Armstrong
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