Free A Carra King by John Brady

the head of the most respected unit in the Gardai had to hang his head when he had VIPs domestic and foreign coming through his offices.
    Minogue felt a sneeze coming on. Conducting site-work in the pissings of rain for a few hours last night was hardly conducive to health. He stood very still, his eyes on the blank Triniton at the far end of the conference table in Kilmartin’s office. The sneeze didn’t come.
    â€œAre you storming the palace, is it,” from Éilis. “For the duration, like?”
    â€œNo,” he said. “I won’t bother me head. It’s only a holiday, not a coup.”
    He trudged back to his own partitioned cubicle. Malone called it the Art Gallery, Kilmartin called it Bedlam, Éilis checked regularly to see if Minogue had put up new Magritte postcards. He dropped the Shaughnessy file on his desk. He didn’t believe Kilmartin’s excuse for not catching the Boston flight this morning. The diversions to Shannon or Manchester would’ve all been swallowed up by now.
    There was a section of a newspaper folded on top of the phone. He opened it and turned it around. He barely saw Iseult’s name at the beginning of the first paragraph before a sneeze made him buckle. It hurt. He leaned on the table and waited, his teeth clenched. Damn, was that prostate? Prostrate from the prostate.
    He sat up again. It was one of these free papers they gave out, three-quarters advertising. Garden furniture, vacuum cleaners, new kitchens. He didn’t recognize the thing in the picture. It looked kind of like a sausage. Maybe it had been arranged with the harsh lighting to show up the shadows of the barbed wire so sharply. Vicious, really. He wiped his nose. Éilis was standing in the doorway when he turned to sneeze again. John Murtagh had shown up from somewhere too.
    â€œNice one there,” Murtagh said. “A bit of celebrity there boss.”
    â€œNice what?”
    â€œThis gets delivered around our place,” said Éilis. “Does she know about it?”
    Minogue wiped his nose again. He picked up the pages. The Holy Family ? He knew Iseult had been working with modelling clay recently. He knew because he’d caught her trying to lift what felt like a hundredweight of the damned stuff up the stairs to her studio. Six months pregnant, up till all hours working on things. Hormones were no excuse.
    The Holy Family . . .? The dinner plate looked real. The eggs and rashers and brown bread were close, but they looked a bit dead. But that was probably the idea. Plaster, it must be. Or could it be plasticene — then his eyes locked onto the words: “. . . father a senior officer in the Garda Murder Squad . . .”
    He sat back, held the paper away more. There was mention of County Clare in the interview. Holy wells at Barnacarraig; childhood visits to the zoo. Her first Holy Communion; altars and holy picture. Blood and flowers: what the hell was that supposed to mean? He skipped through the paragraph. “Bold . . . startling . . . searing . . .” A quote from a gallery owner that Iseult Minogue was prodigously talented. Family violence, Ireland in turmoil: a paean. A paean?
    The last paragraph had pregnancy, love, rage. Then there was an admission that people would easily interpret this as a reflection on her own personal history as a woman in Ireland. An artist on fire. Minogue let the paper fall on his desk and he sat back. Christ on the cross .
    â€œThat’s the first thing I thought of,” Éilis said.
    He had said it aloud? She nodded at the paper.
    â€œThere’s that iconography there,” she added. “It’s obvious.”
    â€œWhat’s obvious?” Murtagh asked.
    â€œMotifs,” said Éilis. “Plain as the nose on your face. See the cross there in the background? Behind the table there?”
    â€œMotives,” Minogue said. “What motives?”
    â€œ Motifs , I